Website Domain Redirection- Rebranding Issues

[JD26]

I have a website domain redirection query

At the moment because of rebranding and domain changes I havehttp://www.physioinqnepean.com.au redirecting to http://www.nepeanphysiohydro.com.au/.http://www.nepeanphysiohydro.com.au/ is the primary domain because at the time I wanted to appease any SEO ramifications that might’ve occurred if I had the new domain at the time “http://www.physioinqnepean.com.au” as the primary domain.Unfortunately, my client now wants to rebrand AGAIN with the new website domain being “http://www.physioinqpenrith.com.au”.I wanted to gauge what would be the best SEO practice in relation to what domain should be the “Primary domain"?

[effectdigital]

First of all, if this is all happening in very quick succession I'd put across to the client that the consequences of such regular major disruption could be a significant loss of rankings. They obviously have to accept the potential consequences before forging ahead. Some rankings can be lost even with a perfect migration project which has a perfect 301 redirect implementation

301 redirects can translate up to 100% of your SEO authority from one place to another, but they won't always. If there are too many links to redirects that can make them slightly less effective. If redirects begin to chain (redirects to redirects) or if the wrong type of redirect is used, that can drastically affect the transfer and you could see as little as 0% of the prior SEO equity on your new domain

Another thing, if content is relatively different (in machine terms, think Boolean string similarity comparison - NOT "oh yeah as a person it looks similar to me") on the old and new pages, that can directly obstruct 301 redirect SEO authority transfer. Google has chosen to rank X page, if you replace it with Y content then it becomes a risk to Google. If content is mostly new, it mostly has to prove itself again (and redirects become largely nullified). To some extent you can get around this by performing backlink amendments

In your particular situation, it seems likely that left to their own devices, developers would just chain the redirects from the oldest domain, through the more recent domain to the final destination of the new domain. Do not let that happen, do check up on implementation ASAP. Do use the change of address tool in Google Search Console

If the client's site / brand isn't a well-known household / high-street name, then I'd expect some backlash from Google in terms of how far they will bother to go for your client's website. If they have just moved domain and Google has swallowed that, doing it again so quickly might cause Google to neglect the new site slightly in terms of crawl allowance. The reason being, the client should have made their mind up which final domain they wanted to move to much earlier. Should Google's crawlers suffer the burdens of an (assumedly) small client's indecision? I'm betting that their answer to that question, would be no

Be careful how much disruption you cause if you're in the small-fry boat. Google obviously don't like to encourage smaller, less valuable (from Google's perspective) ranking resources to disrupt their crawling schedules in such a disorganized manner. There could be consequences for such rapid movements

In terms of which domain should be the primary domain, I'd say that the domain which holds the highest SEO authority should be the primary domain. The domain with the best links pointing to it. Why? Because with that choice, the best links will be hitting the site directly instead of being pumped through 301 redirects (which may or may not transfer all SEO equity)

Let's look at all 3 domains now for you...

Old Domain: physioinqnepean.com.au

• Moz: https://analytics.moz.com/pro/link-explorer/overview?site=physioinqnepean.com.au&target=domain
• Domain Authority: 1
• Linking Domains: 0
• Inbound Links: 0

• Ahrefs: https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/overview/v2/subdomains/recent?target=physioinqnepean.com.au
• Domain Rating: 0
• Linking Domains: 0
• Inbound Links: 0

• Majestic SEO: https://majestic.com/reports/site-explorer?IndexDataSource=F&q=physioinqnepean.com.au&oq=physioinqnepean.com.au
• Trust Flow: 1
• Citation Flow: 4
• Linking Domains: 9
• Inbound Links: 2

Current (Newer) Domain: nepeanphysiohydro.com.au

• Moz: https://analytics.moz.com/pro/link-explorer/overview?site=nepeanphysiohydro.com.au&target=domain
• Domain Authority: 19
• Linking Domains: 63
• Inbound Links: 116

• Ahrefs: https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/overview/v2/subdomains/recent?target=nepeanphysiohydro.com.au
• Domain Rating: 0.7
• Linking Domains: 22
• Inbound Links: 142

• Majestic SEO: https://majestic.com/reports/site-explorer?folder=&q=nepeanphysiohydro.com.au&IndexDataSource=F
• Trust Flow: 8
• Citation Flow: 15
• Linking Domains: 28
• Inbound Links: 266

Future (Proposed)** Domain: physioinqpenrith.com.au**

• Moz: https://analytics.moz.com/pro/link-explorer/overview?site=physioinqpenrith.com.au&target=domain
• Domain Authority: 1
• Linking Domains: 0
• Inbound Links: 0

• Ahrefs: https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/overview/v2/subdomains/recent?target=physioinqpenrith.com.au
• Domain Rating: 0
• Linking Domains: 0
• Inbound Links: 0

• Majestic SEO: https://majestic.com/reports/site-explorer?folder=&q=physioinqpenrith.com.au&IndexDataSource=F
• Trust Flow: 0
• Citation Flow: 0
• Linking Domains: 0
• Inbound Links: 0

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None of the domains are massively strong, but I'd say that the primary (active) domain (which the other domains redirect to) should be the current (Newer)** Domain: nepeanphysiohydro.com.au**

It has some kind of SEO authority. Not much, but a little. It's out of Google's sandbox (unlike the proposed new domain) and it has some rankings. If you could keep this as the main domain and redirect the client's idea for a new one, then you wouldn't actually have to move address - right? That would cut SERP disruption down to a minimum. That would mean you wouldn't have to pester Google again, with yet another migration request which could easily piss them off at this point

Just to be sure, let's check the estimated search traffic for all three domains using Ahrefs and SEMRush

Old Domain: physioinqnepean.com.au

• (Global) Ahrefs search traffic estimate chart (download) - no real performance
• (Global) Ahrefs estimated ranking keywords: 5

• (USA database) SEMRush search traffic estimate chart (download) - no real performance
• (USA database) SEMRush estimated ranking keywords: 2

Current (Newer)** Domain: nepeanphysiohydro.com.au**

• (Global) Ahrefs search traffic estimate chart (download) - some performance, surprisingly good
• (Global) Ahrefs estimated ranking keywords: 411

• (USA database) SEMRush search traffic estimate chart (download) - some performance
• (USA database) SEMRush estimated ranking keywords: 50

Future (Proposed)** Domain: physioinqpenrith.com.au**

• (Global) Ahrefs search traffic estimate chart (download) - no real performance
• (Global) Ahrefs estimated ranking keywords: 0

• (USA database) SEMRush search traffic estimate chart (download) - no real performance
• (USA database) SEMRush estimated ranking keywords: 0

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This confirmed exactly what I said through link data. Estimated traffic data shows that, yes - you should stick with your current domain instead of moving anything around (bad idea!)

Hope that helps

[katemorris]

What do you mean by "primary domain"? Are you talking Google Search Console or something else? I assume you are not using the other domains other than to redirect?

Let me know if the above is true. You can move to yet another domain, but it is advised against as EffectDigital said because everything has to be reindexed again. It's possible to do and they'll be fine in the future, but it is going to hurt for some time.