Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Let your business shine with Listings AI
      Moz Local

      Let your business shine with Listings AI

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Should I use change of address when moving to subdomain

    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.

    Should I use change of address when moving to subdomain

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    3
    5
    762
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • awrikat
      awrikat last edited by

      Hi guys

      So we had a domain that was only for one country, www.example.com

      1 year later we decided to go to another country so we will have all the current website under a country subdomain like : ae.example.com

      we did a 301 redirect
      Should I perform a change of address action from www.example.com to ae.example.com  ?

      please help
      Thanks

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • awrikat
        awrikat @MattAntonino last edited by

        Thank you for your answer,  yes we moved from www.example.com to
        uk.example.com and the new countries will have 
        us.example.com

        now since all old links were for the www.example.com UK we are thinking of using the  change of address in Search Console.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • awrikat
          awrikat @ClaytonJ last edited by

          Thank you for your answer: we did a 301 but I was considering the "change of address tool" to make sure we don't lose any backlinks.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • MattAntonino
            MattAntonino last edited by

            I assume you mean an "official" change of address in Search Console?  Yes, if this is an official, permanent move then you should do the official change of address in WMT.

            Use the change of address tool

            If you've moved your site to a new domain or subdomain, use the Change of address tool in Search Console. A change of address notification helps you manage the transition needed by Google to index your new URLs at the new address, while minimizing impact to your current ranking in Google Search results.

            https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83106?hl=en

            awrikat 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • ClaytonJ
              ClaytonJ last edited by

              I am a little unclear on the question however a 301 redirect is the best way to tell google to forget about the old URL focus on the end URL of the redirect.   It is as clean and efficient as you get.

              But to be clear direct from google webmaster:-

              "301 redirects are particularly useful in the following circumstances:

              • You've moved your site to a new domain, and you want to make the transition as seamless as possible."

              https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93633?hl=en

              Hope that answers your query.

              awrikat 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • 1 / 1
              • First post
                Last post

              Got a burning SEO question?

              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


              Start my free trial


              Browse Questions

              Explore more categories

              • Moz Tools

                Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

              • SEO Tactics

                Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

              • Community

                Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

              • Digital Marketing

                Chat about tactics outside of SEO

              • Research & Trends

                Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

              • Support

                Connect on product support and feature requests.

              • See all categories

              Related Questions

              • Chris8198

                301 Redirecting from domain to subdomain

                We're taking on a redesign of our corporate site on our main domain.  We also have a number of well established, product based subdomains. There are a number of content pages that currently live on the corporate site that rank well, and bring in a great deal of traffic, though we are considering placing 301 redirects in place to point that traffic to the appropriate pages on the subdomains. If redirected correctly, can we expect the SEO value of the content pages currently living on the corporate site to transfer to the subdomains, or will we be negatively impacting our SEO by transferring this content from one domain to multiple subdomains?

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chris8198
                0
              • IceIcebaby

                Using disavow tool for 404s

                Hey Community, Got a question about the disavow tool for you. My site is getting thousands of 404 errors from old blog/coupon/you name it sites linking to our old URL structure (which used underscores and ended in .jsp). It seems like the webmasters of these sites aren't answering back or haven't updated their sites in ages so it's returning 404 errors. If I disavow these domains and/or links will it clear out these 404 errors in Google? I read the GWT help page on it, but it didn't seem to answer this question. Feel free to ask any questions that may help you understand the issue more. Thanks for your help,
                -Reed

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IceIcebaby
                0
              • nodiffrei

                Using subdomains for related landing pages?

                Seeking subdomain usage and related SEO advice...  I'd like to use multiple subdomains for multiple landing pages all with content related to the main root domain. Why?...Cost: so I only have to register one domain. One root domain for better 'branding'. Multiple subdomains that each focus on one specific reason & set of specific keywords people would search a solution to their reason to hire us (or our competition).

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nodiffrei
                0
              • SMG-Texas

                301 Redirect of subdomain?

                Fellow Mozzers, I'm having a hard time wrapping my brain around a redirect issue and thought it was worth posing the question to the Moz community.  I did a search first but couldn't find the exact answer I was looking for. How does a 301 redirect work when you redirect a sub domain example.homepage.com to www.homepage.com but you keep the sub directories of example.homepage.com/page-1 active and are trying to rank them?  I'm dealing with a current project where this is happening and this doesn't make sense to me, to redirect the subdomain if you're also trying to rank/create search traffic for pages, sub directories on example.homepage.com. This also get's into the debate of if a sub domain site is viewed as it's own website and therefore has to rank itself.  If this is true, it seems like we're kind of killing the authority of the site by redirecting it. Additionally, www.homepage.com has a much stronger link profile than example.homepage.com I hope this makes sense.  Any thoughts are appreciated.  Thanks for your time.

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SMG-Texas
                0
              • SamCUK

                How to add subdomains to webmaster tools?

                Can anyone help with how I add a sub domain to webmaster tools? Also do I need to create a seperate sitemap for each sub domain? Any help appreciated!

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK
                1
              • sbrault74

                Moving Content To Another Website With No Redirect?

                I've got a website that has lots of valuable content and tools but it's been hit too hard by both Panda and Penguin. I came to the conclusion that I'd be better off with a new website as this one is going to hell no matter how much time and money I put in it. Had I started a new website the first time it got hit by Penguin, I'd be profitable today. I'd like to move some of that content to this other domain but I don't want to do 301 redirects as I don't want to pass bad link juice. I know I'll lose all links and visitors to the original website but I don't care. My only concern is duplicate content. I was thinking of setting the pages to noindex on the original website and wait until they don't appear in Google's index. Then I'd move them over to the new domain to be indexed again. Do you see any problem with this? Should I rewrite everything instead? I hate spinning content...!

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbrault74
                1
              • MangoMan16

                Changing Servers + Effect on SEO

                Hi, I am currently with a very slow server. Our website takes quite a while to load, FTP is very slow and content changes with Wordpress are slow because even the database connection takes a lot of time. However, my website ranks very well. Traffic has doubled in the last year. Our domain has been registered with this company for over 10 years. I am wondering if changing to a different hosting provider would have an effect on my rankings due to the change in IP.

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MangoMan16
                0
              • Peter264

                All page files in root? Or to use directories?

                We have thousands of pages on our website; news articles, forum topics, download pages... etc - and at present they all reside in the root of the domain /. For example: /aosta-valley-i6816.html
                /flight-sim-concorde-d1101.html
                /what-is-best-addon-t3360.html We are considering moving over to a new URL system where we use directories.  For example, the above URLs would be the following: /images/aosta-valley-i6816.html
                /downloads/flight-sim-concorde-d1101.html
                /forums/what-is-best-addon-t3360.html Would we have any benefit in using directories for SEO purposes?  Would our current system perhaps mean too many files in the root / flagging as spammy?  Would it be even better to use the following system which removes file endings completely and suggests each page is a directory: /images/aosta-valley/6816/
                /downloads/flight-sim-concorde/1101/
                /forums/what-is-best-addon/3360/ If so, what would be better: /images/aosta-valley/6816/ or /images/6816/aosta-valley/ Just looking for some clarity to our problem! Thank you for your help guys!

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter264
                0

              Get started with Moz Pro!

              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

              Start my free trial
              Products
              • Moz Pro
              • Moz Local
              • Moz API
              • Moz Data
              • STAT
              • Product Updates
              Moz Solutions
              • SMB Solutions
              • Agency Solutions
              • Enterprise Solutions
              • Digital Marketers
              Free SEO Tools
              • Domain Authority Checker
              • Link Explorer
              • Keyword Explorer
              • Competitive Research
              • Brand Authority Checker
              • Local Citation Checker
              • MozBar Extension
              • MozCast
              Resources
              • Blog
              • SEO Learning Center
              • Help Hub
              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
              • How-to Guides
              • Moz Academy
              • API Docs
              About Moz
              • About
              • Team
              • Careers
              • Contact
              Why Moz
              • Case Studies
              • Testimonials
              Get Involved
              • Become an Affiliate
              • MozCon
              • Webinars
              • Practical Marketer Series
              • MozPod
              Connect with us

              Contact the Help team

              Join our newsletter
              Moz logo
              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
              • Accessibility
              • Terms of Use
              • Privacy

              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.