Quickly Transition to a New Domain with This Link-Building Strategy

Learn how to use a link-building strategy for a successful transition to a new domain name.

Video Transcript

David: You had a second question; did you want to tackle that one?

Dave: Yeah, go for that. It’s probably pretty related to the first one.

David: Yeah, it is. How long do you think it will take Google to start showing a country-specific search result when you establish a new country-specific site and the current .com is made to be USA-specific? So, it sounds like you’re asking if you were to make this transition between country A and country B, how long would it take country B to show up?

Dave: Yeah, for somebody in country B, how long would it take?

Dave: Yeah. So, if it’s a brand-new domain, completely virgin, no one has ever used it, not bought it from some sort of manager or holder of websites, I’d say three or more months.

Dave: Does it matter if the domain has been owned for a while?

David: If it has, then you need to put it through the wringer. You need to use the backlink tools to confirm that no one spammed the crap out of it.

Dave: So, they have it, but they’ve been forwarding it already to the same site.

David: Then it’s fine. I would still backlink-check it just to make sure. Again, we’ve talked about that idea. Let me give you a case study. So, you’ve heard of the tool Moz, right? They used to be called SEO Moz if you’ve been around SEO long enough. A few years ago, when I was at the agency, one of our little practices was to go, hey, how’s SEO Moz getting their backlinks? Can we get into it like that? So, we just did kind of a hey, wonder where they’re getting their links from, kind of thing. We realized they had purchased the domain moz.com, and they were building links to moz.com that would forward to seomoz.com. About three months later, they rebranded and said, hey, we’re no longer SEO Moz. We are now Moz. What they did was something very smart. They built links to the domain that they were going to be using in the future with authority, so people would often not even notice the link. It was only because we were looking so minutely that we even noticed. Right? So, Google had identified that moz.com existed and was just forwarding to seomoz.com. But when they made the switch, there were already links pointing to moz.com, and that helped them immensely. I’m about to do this with one of my clients. One of the things we’re going to do is go through their backlink profile and change as many links as we can without making people notice it from the existing URL to the coming URL. And when we do that, then when we make the shift, Google will already acknowledge there are links to the new domain, but they will no longer 301 redirect, they’ll just go straight to the home page. That will help the new site index faster. It will help this transition faster. So, what I would do if you’re transitioning this country thing since the redirect already exists, is make sure it’s a 301 redirect. Right? So, certain registrars will say it’s a permanent redirect, right? And then, go to any websites in that target country that you can change because you control or you have a good relationship with that website. Maybe you even begin a new guest blogging strategy for the explicit purpose of adding additional links to the new country’s domain name. Initially, it’s a good forward, and nobody’s going to care or notice because it’s going to forward on to the .com. But when you shift, what will happen is that the new country will suddenly get indexed more. Now the disappointment from this is because .com will still be running, and you’ll decrease the number of links to your .com immediately. Then you’ll have to gussy those up. So, one of the things that’s always important to do during one of these transitions is link-building in preparation for this transition. Get as many new links as you can. Have some scheduled to go off immediately after launch if you can. Like, work with a blog and write up six months of blog posts. Get some in the queue. So, two weeks after the site launches, there’s a new link. Get that going, and that will help immensely.