Bought domain for $4MM and then lost rankings...HELP

We bought giftcard.com for $4MM last month and moved giftcardlab.com website to the new domain and we have lost all of our rankings in Google. We followed the guidelines provided by Google very closely including their name change tool. I would be very much appreciative if someone has any ideas what we could be doing wrong. Thanks, Dave

 

$4Million or $4Thousand?

 

$4 Million

 

If you bought the website with content on it, then transferred another site's content to it, there is your explanation. If this is not the case, please explain more of what you did exactly for further review...

 

Nice buy. Sounds like having that key domain will help your company grow.

Are you saying that your giftcardlab.com rankings are not being passed to your new domain on giftcard.com? I have no suggestion or idea what might be going wrong if you are following Google's guidelines. Although you might want to try posting your question directly on some of Google's webmaster forums - you are probably more likely to get someone from Google to look into it than posting here. With the time of year and investment you guys made time is obviously of the essence. Good luck!


For those who are curious:
http://www.dallasnews.com/business/...cardlab-rebranding-itself-as-giftcard.com.ece
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/gi...for-over-4000000-in-cash-and-stock-2012-10-03
http://domainnamewire.com/2012/10/04/4m-giftcard-com-seller-big-ticket-domain-sales/

 

There was content on GiftCard.com but not very good content. Giftcardlab.com had much better rankings an content. We moved all of our content from GiftCardlab to GiftCard.com and spent great care with redirects and change of address.

 

Thanks brwntwn, I have posted on the GWT forums but hasn't been a great help yet.

 

That is what I assumed. I would consider posting a question here:

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!categories/webmasters/crawling-indexing--ranking

 

Hi hoex,

I've seen that the remain indexed pages of giftcardlab redirected to the same inner paegs on giftcard and you've manged to setup much better URL structure on the new site, it does looks better.

Give it some time, it should get you the ranks back - Good job.

 

Thanks metros, we've tried. I sure hope you are right.

 

Do you have a 301 redirect on your old domain? Was the old domain name penalized?

 

I assume all the redirects are 301s? If you have (or can get) a list of all the giftcardlab.com URLs, then do a bulk http header check (any PHP developer could easily code this and dump the results to a CSV file, for example). (If you haven't already done it.)

I also assume that due to giftcardlab.com redirects you are still getting the same traffic, just waiting for giftcard.com rankings to go up?

If you got all the redirects right, then as metros mentioned it's just time required. (But of course continue marketing and get your giftcard.com branding out there - not just so customers know, but also SEs. Momentum is important.)

Good luck, mate.

 

Hoex, have you considered the EMD penalty?
Even though it might not be the case, and waiting is your solution, but give it a shot and look into GiftCard.com linking profile.

Note: EMD is Exact Match Penalty.

 

Are you using webmaster tools?

Did you implement a domain change in there?

 

not a good move, i had done similar in past and had lost ranking of my all domains which were redirected, and than i had to do some extra work to get it back in business.

 

You bought a domain for 5 million and you dont have your SEO team?!

There is a temporary rank fluctuation when changing domain.

Maybe the new domain u bought has had some penalty on it

 

yes
ask your SEO team why this happened
you should have a SEO team if you are investing big money in domain and business then invest small amount on SEO also

 

Your site, giftcardcom has locked my browser for about 30 seconds. You should check your html codes to remove unnecessary javascripts if you want better rankings on SERP's.

As for the domain redirection you have asked, it's a painful process that needs at least 2-3 months to see the positive results. It's very normal to lose current rankings in the first few months and sometimes it can end up with losing the old rankings permanently. Changing the domain is a bit like a gamble.
Don't attempt to build new backlinks for your new or old domain in the first 6 months of redirection. Focus on on-site optimizations (I am good at optimizing) and adding new content (it's not a must) You may add new content to the internal pages only. Don't update the homepage frequently.

BTW, $4M is not much for your new domain if you can use it productively. It must generate at least extra $200k per month to become a good buy for you. Because this is your opportunity cost of your $4M if you had bought another domain or site instead of the domain, giftcard.

 

If you can spend 4 mil for a domain then I don't see why you can't spend several thousands for SEO experts. Hire a team, or a well known SEOer, Yoast for example.

 

Interesting...When I try to go to GiftCard.com right now I get an "Invalid Website" error message referencing a CMSSiteManager.

Are you doing any Geo Targeting/Redirections on the site?