Don’t make this mistake with your business website

I mentioned in yesterday’s post that I was getting quotes on a new roof for my house. I had the names of the four companies I wanted to get quotes from, and so I Googled each one to get to their website. When I Googled one of them, I clicked on the first result in the search results, and went to their website. And it was terrible. The website was out of date, looked homemade, and had very little content in it.

A new roof can cost over $20,000. If a roofing company can’t afford to get a professional website, can I trust them to do a professional job when they can’t even spend a fraction of that for their business website? So I immediately hit the back button and was about to Google the next company in my list when I noticed something. This company had a second listing in the results, with a different URL. So I clicked on that. And low and behold, it was a nice, professional website. It looked great. It had lots of content. It had calls-to-action. It had a chatbot, and all the features you’d expect on a professional website.

The Problem

You may be asking what the problem is, now that I found that they do have a professional website. But the problem is, they have two websites. One good, and one bad. And both are indexed in the search engines. Not only that, I found the bad one first. So let me spell out why this is problematic.

It makes a bad first impression. Because I landed on the old, unprofessional site first, it left me with a bad impression of this company. And honestly, it still leaves me with a bad impression. If your customers are finding the bad website, or both websites, it can erode trust in your company.

It can have a negative SEO impact. Both websites will likely target similar keywords. This “cannibalization” can cause search engines to struggle with determining which page is more relevant, potentially leading to both sites ranking lower than they would individually. When other websites link to your business, they’ll be linking to one of the two sites. This divides your “link juice” and authority, making it harder for either site to achieve a high ranking. A single website with a strong backlink profile is more powerful than two with weaker ones. Search engines assign a “domain authority” score to a website. By having two sites, you’re splitting the authority and making it harder for either to become a dominant player in your niche. Your content may be the same on both sites, and if so, that is a major red flag for search engines and can result in penalties.

Why did this happen?

I don’t know this company, so I can’t say with certainty why they have two websites, but I can take a few educated guesses after being in business for almost twenty years. The most likely reason would be that they lost access or didn’t know how to get access to the original site, so they hired someone to make them a new one. You may be saying to yourself this seems unlikely, but trust me when I say I see it all the time. Sometimes people have their employees make websites, and then that employee leaves and nobody else knows how to access that website. Or you hired a person to make the website and that person disappeared. Sad, but it happens. Or the new developer forgot to redirect the old domain, and nobody at the company noticed.

I worked with a business many, many years ago who had fallen out with their previous developer. I later learned why through my own experience with them, but when we first met they said they wanted a new domain and didn’t care about the old one. I explained why they should care, and that there are ways to try to get access to the domain that their previous developer had purchased for them, but they dismissed that idea and insisted on just getting a new one.

Whatever the reason, this is a bad practice and needs to be fixed.

Changing Domains

I’m not generally a fan of changing domains unless you have a very good reason. Your domain name is a foundational element of your website’s SEO. Over time, search engines like Google build trust and authority with your domain. Your old domain might be associated with specific keywords that your business ranks for. Changing the domain can disrupt those associations, causing your rankings to fluctuate or drop significantly.

Links from other websites pointing to yours are a huge SEO ranking factor. When you change your domain, all of those backlinks become broken unless you implement proper redirects.

Older domains are often seen as more trustworthy and authoritative by search engines. A new domain starts from scratch, losing the built-up goodwill and age of the old one.

However, there are times when you need to change your domain, either because you’ve changed your business name, rebranded, merged with another company, or have some legal or trademark issues. But there are ways to change domains and do it right.

How to change domains and do it right

The number one thing you need to do when you get a new website on a new domain is to make sure that your old website is redirecting to your new website. Why? Because those old links that are in the search results are not going to go away the minute you get a new website. And if you don’t remove the old one, they may outrank the new site. Not just the search engines, but other places link to your website too, including directories, Google business listing, Yelp, etc.

It’s important that when you change domains, that you redirect every old URL to the correct, corresponding URL on the new website. That this means is that if someone clicks on a search result showing your old website, they automatically land on your new website on the correct page. So if I clicked in the search results to see your about page, and I was clicking on the result for the old website, I should wind up on the new site’s about page. If done well, the user won’t even know that they clicked on the old URL.

Doing proper redirects keeps people from viewing the wrong website, and it keeps the SEO from your old site’s backlinks going to the new site and helps your new site get ranked.

When you change your domain, make a point to go to any known directories and your business listings to get that URL changed as well.

Finally, you should use the Change of Address tool in Google Search Console to make sure Google knows that your entire website has moved to a new domain.

Finally, once your new site is live on the new domain, makes sure you update your Google analytics so that it’s tracking traffic for the new site, and keep an eye on it to makes sure traffic is getting there.