What are the problems with using an old domain name to build a website?

For website builders, it is not easy to find a quality domain name that fits the positioning of their website. When encountering the desired old domain name, although it may come with certain advantages, but also accompanied by a number of special circumstances. Next, we analyze the reasons for these situations, and provide an effective solution strategy.

First, before the line has been included and ranking illusion

Use the old domain name site, in the site is not yet officially online, search engine crawling function is not open, sometimes found that the site has been included, and even some of the keywords have good rankings. However, these data are often deceptive, not according to the subsequent planning.

The root cause of this phenomenon is that the search engine has a memory function of the domain name. When the old domain name re-activated, the search engine will mistakenly think that the previous site to restore access, so show the previous retention of the inclusion and ranking data. But with the depth of the search engine on the new site to crawl and analyze the content, once the current site is recognized with the past content has been very different, the rankings will fall rapidly.

Solution: At the beginning of the website, do not be misled by false data, need to calmly wait for the search engine reassessment. At the same time, continue to output high-quality original content, optimize the site structure, enhance the real weight of the site, and gradually establish a new search engine impression.

Second, a large number of 404 pages appear after the line

When the site is officially online, allowing search engines such as Baidu crawl, there are often a large number of 404 pages. This is mainly because the old domain name in the former user operation period, the accumulation of numerous content pages. And in the new station construction process, these old content has not been retained or migrated, resulting in search engine crawling can not find the corresponding page.

Solution: Use the dead chain submission function of the webmaster tool to submit the detected 404 pages in batch to inform the search engine that these pages have been invalidated, so as to avoid affecting the overall quality score of the website. At the same time, the site for a comprehensive investigation to ensure that the new content and the old links between the conflict, if there are old pages that can be utilized content, selective migration or re-editing after release.

Third, the rapid decline in rankings after the launch

Usually 2 - 3 days after the site is online, the early seemingly good rankings will all disappear, leaving only a small number of included pages, but these pages are also opened for the 404 state. This is a normal phenomenon when using an old domain name to build a website, no need to worry too much.

Countermeasures: First of all, timely and thorough treatment of 404 pages, in addition to submitting dead chains, but also in the website code level to set up a standard 404 page prompts to guide users and search engines to jump to the correct page. Secondly, reasonable set robots.txt file, clearly inform the search engine which pages are allowed to crawl, which need to be restricted to avoid ineffective crawl consume resources. Due to the search engine on the old domain name to re-recognize the need for time, this optimization process may last about 2 weeks, during this period need to maintain patience, continue to monitor the site data, according to the actual situation of the flexibility to adjust the optimization strategy.