Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Why is my domain authority still 1?
- 
					
					
					
					
 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.vanillacrush.co.uk/ http://www.carissamay.co.uk http://www.carissamay.co.uk Any help would be greatly appreciated! Many thanks 
- 
					
					
					
					
 Thats good to hear  Thank you for sharing the article, I shall have a read now. Thank you for sharing the article, I shall have a read now.Carissa 
- 
					
					
					
					
 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. 
- 
					
					
					
					
 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://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/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. 
- 
					
					
					
					
 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. 
- 
					
					
					
					
 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  
- 
					
					
					
					
 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. 
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
- 
		
		Moz ToolsChat with the community about the Moz tools. 
- 
		
		SEO TacticsDiscuss the SEO process with fellow marketers 
- 
		
		CommunityDiscuss industry events, jobs, and news! 
- 
		
		Digital MarketingChat about tactics outside of SEO 
- 
		
		Research & TrendsDive into research and trends in the search industry. 
- 
		
		SupportConnect on product support and feature requests. 
Related Questions
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		How i can increase my page authority?
 Hi, I have website and i want to increase my page authority. My website is latestdatabase.com I have making more backlinks but not good page authority so far. Please give me suggest. Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LatestMailingDatabase1
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		Combining Two Sites With Similar Domain Authority
 Hello, We run two sites with the same product, product descriptions and url structure. Essentially, the two sites are the same except for domain name and minor differences on the home pages. We've run this way for quite a few years. Both sites have a domain authority of 48 and there are not a large number of duplicate incoming links. I understand the "book" to say we should combine the sites with 301's to the similar pages. I am concerned about doing this because "site 2" still does about 20% of our business. We have been losing organic traffic for a number of years. I think this mainly has to do with a more competitive environment. However, where google used to serve both our sites for a search term it now will only show one. How much organic benefit should we see if we combine. Will it be significant enough to merge the two sites. Understandably, I realize the future can't be predicted but I would like to know if anyone has had a similar experience or opinion Thanks Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ffctas0
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		One domain - Multiple servers
 Can I have the root domain pointing to one server and other URLs on the domain pointing to another server without redirecting, domain masking or HTML masking? Dealing with an old site that is a mess. I want to avoid migrating the old website to the new environment. I want to work on a page by page and section by section basis, and whatever gets ready to go live I will release on the new server while keeping all other pages untouched and live on the old server. What are your recommendations? Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Joseph-Green-SEO0
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		Move domain to new domain, for how much time should I keep forwarding?
 I'm not sure but my website looks like is not getting it's juice as supposed to be. As we already know, google preferred https sites and this is what happened to mine, it was been crawling as https but when the time came to move my domain to new domain, I used 301 or domain forwarding service, unfortunately they didn't have a way to forward from https to new https, they only had regular http to https, when users clicked to my old domain from google search my site was returned to "site does not exist", I used hreflang at least that google would detect my new domain been forwarding and yes it worked but now I'm wondering, for how much time should I keep the forwarding the old domain to the new one, my site looks like is not going up, I have changed all the external links, any help would be appreciated. Thanks! Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fulanito1
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		SEO value in multiple backlinks from same domain and from various sub-domains.
 A site has a link to my site as one of their main tabs, which means whenever a user clicks through to another page within the site, my link - being a main tab - is there. This creates thousands of links from this site. How does Google treat this? Do we have a rough formula estimate. In other words, assume it creates 1,000 backlinks would the SEO value be around the same as if I had just 2 link total as a main tab, but on 2 different non-related sites? Or, does it actually count fully as 1,000 links? Links from various sub-domains. Several .EDU's are linking to my site. Different schools within the overall same university. Example: nursing.abc.edu links to my site, but so does business.abc.edu. For SEO does that count as much as if I had links from complete non-related universities, or would Google evaluate that these links are related (since same main domain) and that will discount any links more than 1 to some extent? If discounted, then what do we estimate the discount to be? thank yoyu Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen1
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		Merging Domains... Sub-domains, Directories or Seperate Sites?
 Hello! I am hoping you can help me decide the best path to take here... A little background: I'm moving to a new company that has three old domains (the oldest is 10 years old), which get a lot of traffic from their e-letters. Until recently they have not cared about SEO. So the websites have some structural, coding, URL and other issues. The sites are indexed, but have a problem getting crawled and/or indexed for new content - haven't delved into this yet but am certain I will be able to fix any of these issues. These three domains are PR4, PR4, PR5 and contain hundreds of unique articles. Here's the question... They want to move these three sites **to their main company site (PR4) and create sub domains for each one. ** I am wondering if this is a good idea or not. I have merged sites before (creating categories and/or directories) and the end result is that the ONE big site, is much for effective than TWO smaller, less authoritative sites. But the sub domain idea is something I am unsure about from an SEO perspective. Should we do this with sub domains? Or do you think we should keep the sites separate? How do Panda and Penguin play into this? Thanks in advance for the help! SD P.S. I'm not a huge advocate in using PR as a measurement tool, but since I can't reveal the actual domains, I figured I would list it as a reference point. Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | essdee0
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		How long should a domain redirect take?
 Hi, I know that this is a 'How long is a piece of string?' type question but at what point should the ranking value of site A pass over to site B following a domain 301 redirect? I have shifted a domain over to a new URL, same hosting server, same IP address. I haven't made any URL changes or any content changes other than to change the site logo to match the new domain name. Domain B is basically an exact clone of domain A. I have redirected Domain A to domain B using the following line at the top of the .htaccess file:- Redirect 301 / http://www.newdomain.com/ I have submitted a sitemap for the new domain via google webmaster tools. It looks like the original domain as been completely indexed by google following the redirect as all rankings have been dropped from the results and there are no results for a site:olddomain.com search. Surely the rankings should have switched over at this point? Any help would be much appreciated. Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdeLewis
 Ade.0
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		Are URL shorteners building domain authority everytime someone uses a link from their service?
 My understanding of domain authority is that the more links pointing to any page / resource on a domain, the greater the overall domain authority (and weight passed from outbound links on the domain) is. Because URL shorteners create links on their own domain that redirect to an off-domain page but link "to" an on-domain URL, are they gaining domain authority each time someone publishes a shortened link from their service? Or does Google penalize these sites specifically, or links that redirect in general? Or am I missing something else? Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jay.Neely0
 
			
		 
			
		 
			
		 
					
				 
					
				 
					
				 
					
				 
					
				 
					
				 
					
				