Why is my domain authority still 1?

[Carissamay]

I changed the domain of my website from www.vanillacrush.co.uk to www.carissamay.co.uk at the end of December and yet my DA for carissamay is still 1.

As advised, I set up a 301 redirect from VC to CM which seems to be working fine. However when I check on redirect detective it tells me I also have a 302 set up. Could this be confusing things?

http://www.vanillacrush.co.uk http://www.vanillacrush.co.uk/ http://www.carissamay.co.uk

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Many thanks

[JordanLowry]

I think the low domain authority may have something to do with no backlinks to the new domain. From what I have read and experienced domain authority is not transferable. Even though the redirect is in place your new domain does not benefit from the backlinks/authority of the old domain.

What you could do is reach out to websites linking to the old domain and ask them to consider updating their backlinks.

I hope that helps some.

[Carissamay]

Oh really! My understanding from what I had read online was that if you set up a 301 it will help transfer the majority of your domain authority? Maybe I have misunderstood!.

Is there anything else I can do? It seems a shame to lose all the hard work.

Thank you for your response

[JordanLowry]

I think the mentality behind that is it would be too easy to manipulate. People could just buy expired domains and redirect them to their website. I am going through a similar issue with a website.

I would put your old website through Moz's opensite explorer and identify the backlinks. Then I would reach out to all the domains that linked to your old website and ask them to update the link.

Also, did you do a domain level redirect or redirect each individual page?

That should help you out some.

[ViviCa1]

The redirect does help with passing on the link juice. Domain authority is not a Google metric but a Moz metric. Therefore while your DA may have gone down to 1, your hard work isn't lost. All the domain authority does is predict how well your website will rank, it isn't consulted by Google, though.

It doesn't take into consideration any redirects from another domain. But Google does take these types of links into consideration that have been 301 redirected.

Here is an article that may help: https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain-authority

Where possible I would also suggest contacting websites to update the link, but you may find that your traffic and rankings won't be as affected as you might fear.

[Carissamay]

Ah yes, that makes sense. Thank you, I will try that out.

I beleive it is set up at the domain level. Is that best? I am not entirely sure how you redirect individual pages.

Thank you very much for your help Jordan.

[Carissamay]

Thats good to hear Thank you for sharing the article, I shall have a read now.

Carissa