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.
Changing DNS -- SEO implications?
-
Hey Moz,
We're migrating an old site on an old server over to a new server/DNS. The plan is to keep the same URL structure and reuse our existing URL's. As long as we make minimal changes to each page's content, we should be able to update our DNS entry and get all the pages recreated and assigned to their correct URLs without any reduction in SEO rankings. Is this correct?
This site gets a lot of organic traffic and ranks highly on some challenging keywords, so it's key that we retain our rankings as much as possible.
I've read that it's wise to lower the DNS time-to-live to one hour, about a day before the move, to help Google crawl the DNS a little quicker.
Are there any other recommendations you guys can offer or past experiences?
-
Can you 301 from the DNS in HTTP or would you do an .htaccess
-
While the Bruce Clay link seems solid, I believe it is also quite dated. Steps 1 and 2 usually happen within minutes, not days. I have moved multiple sites between hosts without performing those steps and have not experienced any issue. I have also used tools to validate the results which use checkpoints from around the world and the transition happens very smoothly, very quickly.
If you have a static site which does not depend on User Generated Content (i.e. forums, etc.) the process is as easy as copying the old site to the new location, verifying the move, then updating the DNS records and 301'ing the old site to the new location. If anyone has a different experience from this year, I would love to hear additional feedback.
-
If all things end up be exactly the same your biggest risk is resetting your domains trust with Google. In theory a new website's owner may not run the website with the same credibility as the former owner... It is a risk to wear if you can justify the speed improvements cost differences etc...
The above being said it is something that happens on the net quite often. If your new structure will effectively be an improvement to users and you map everything correctly you should be o.k.
Here are some steps I have used before taken from the Bruce Clay Website:
Source: http://www.bruceclay.com/seo-tech-tips/techtips.htm
How to move a site to a new host
If you are moving your site to a new IP address or ISP this procedure will help minimize the downtime and confusion during DNS propagation.
|
|
- Set up the DNS on your new host to point to your existing (old host) site first. This is an important first step.
- Now change the TLD (top level domain) information at your domain registrar to point to this new site DNS. Your old site should still show by either by IP or domain name. This step results in "propagation" which commonly takes 72 hours to update servers world-wide, so do not proceed with step 3 for about four days.
- Copy your existing site to your new site and validate that all files have transferred and the links work.
- After allowing 4 days for the DNS to be fully propagated, point your new DNS to your new site. Make sure that your old site mailboxes have been emptied before you change any DNS info at this time. Once this DNS change occurs you cannot get to your old mail.
- If everything has been validated you should now also point the old DNS to your new site. This is a safety issue in case there is a lingering propagation error.
- Search Engine rankings or bookmarked pages should transfer to your new site with a 301 redirect.
After everything has been checked you should be able to delete your old site after a sufficient amount of time has passed (not more than 3 months). Note that Google does cache the old DNS address information and until they verify that the site has moved and store the new DNS information they may not visit your new site. The 301 will assist in this area.
If you are moving from an IIS server to Linux (Apache) you should validate your formmail scripts, and any items that may not be cross platform compatible. If you are moving from Linux to IIS then your .htaccess file will not be compatible as well as the ability to CHMOD permissions. Validate all functions with your ISP Administrator (some of the following steps may need to be redone on your new server).
|
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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.
Related Questions
-
Why have my positions dropped after implementing recommended changes?
Hello! I have taken a Moz free trial and am really enjoying using this service. But, after implementing the recommended changes by Moz my rankings have really dropped. Is this normal? I was averaging around 17 but now averaging 40. Here is my website if anyone has any ideas of what I might be doing wrong, I would greatly appreciate any help.
Technical SEO | | NicoleChambers
Thank you
Nicole1 -
SEO - New URL structure
Hi, Currently we have the following url structure for all pages, regardless of the hierarchy: domain.co.uk/page, such as domain/blog name. Can you, please confirm the following: 1. What is the benefit of organising the pages as a hierarchy, i.e. domain/features/feature-name or domain/industries/industry-name or domain/blog/blog name etc. 2. This will create too many 301s - what is Google's tolerance of redirects? Is it worth for us changing the url structure or would you only recommend to add breadcrumbs? Many thanks Katarina
Technical SEO | | Katarina-Borovska1 -
Resubmit sitemaps on every change?
Hello Mozers, Our sitemaps were submitted to Google and Bing, and are successfully indexed. Every time pages are added to our store (ecommerce), we re-generate the xml sitemap. My question is: should we be resubmitting the sitemaps every time their content change, or since they were submitted once can we assume that the crawlers will re-download the sitemaps by themselves (I don't like to assume). What are best practices here? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | yacpro131 -
Coming soon SEO
Hi, I was wondering what is the best practice to redirect all the links juice by redirecting all the pages of your website to a coming soon page. The coming soon page will point to the domain.com, not to a subfolder. Should I move the entire website to a subfolder and redirect this folder to the coming soon page? Thanks
Technical SEO | | bigrat950 -
PageSpeed Insights DNS Issue
Hi Anyone else having problems with Google's Pagespeed tool? I am trying to benchmark a couple of my sites but, according to Google, my sites are not loading. They will work when I run them through the test at one point but if I try again, say 15 mins later, they will present the following error message An error has occured DNS error while resolving DOMAIN. Check the spelling of the host, and ensure that the page is accessible from the public Internet. You may refresh to try again. If the problem persists, please visit the PageSpeed Insights mailing list for support. This isn't too much an issue for testing page speed but am concerned that if Google is getting this error on the speed test it will also get the error when trying to crawl and index the pages. I can confirm the sites are up and running. I the sites are pointed at the server via A-records and haven't been changed for many weeks so cannot be a dns updating issue. Am at a loss to explain. Any advice would be most welcome. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | daedriccarl0 -
Image Size for SEO
Hi there I have a website which has some png images on pages, around 300kb - is this too much? How many kbs a page, to what extent do you know does Google care about page load speed? is every kb important, is there a limit? Any advice much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
Restaurant menu SEO: PDF or HTML?
Is it better to use a PDF or hard code restaurant menus (or any document for that matter) in HTML? I want the content to be indexed and thought PDF was the way to go for several reasons, but I wanted to get confirmation on this before I move forward.
Technical SEO | | BostonWright0 -
Iframes & SEO
I've got a client that wants a site with all content in iFrames. They saw another site they liked & asked if we could do it. Of course we can technically. How big a negative hit would they take with SEO? Is there anything we can do to mitigate it, such as redirects, etc? Thanks for the help!
Technical SEO | | wcksmith0