Site redesign/cleanup SEO Advice
-
Hi Everyone, New member here, but loving it. I have some questions that I couldn't find the answers to. We are radically changing our site. Over the years it has accumulated thousands of garbage files, WP installations, etc.
We enjoy good rankings for lots of our keywords.
Are there articles/advice/suggestions on how to do this with the least harm to our rankings?
One of the largest concerns is for pages currently ranked and we want to move them to blog posts with a preceding /blog/ in the url. The filename, title, etc. will all remain identical.
the url is www.wulongforlife.com
Sure appreciate any advice.
Thanks in advance.
-
Thank you Mark.
Wow, what a comprehensive response. I appreciate it.
I have also found some more info doing further research.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/should-i-change-my-urls-for-seo
I will continue to post info here as I find it.
-
Julia-
Good problem to have. I can provide you with some overall suggestions related to what you need to focus on as we have brought over 20+ wordpress sites this year that are in a similar situation. Good content; good ranking; need to clean it up but dont want to lose any seo value.....
Here are some of the most important items:
- Make sure you do an upfront XML sitemap audit so you know exactly what you have. This is your opportunity to reformat it if it needs it and make sure the site is set up correctly.
- Make sure you do a crawl of the site immediately prior to making any changes so you can use it as the benchmark for what you have today and to make sure you are improving in all areas. Make sure you understand everything that is being indexed and everything that isnt being indexed.
- You care the most about content that is being indexed. So make sure you focus on that content and conversion first.
- Make sure you back up the site in its entirety. If something weird happens, you want to be able to reinstall and start back at step 1.
- You want to make sure that as you move over pages that are currently ranked that you make as few changes as possible.....Keepng the url the same with the preceding blog is a good strategy......another option might be to leave the url structure exactly the same and doing a 301 redirect from the new url might be a solid solution if there is any impact to page ranking when you change the url by adding a preceding /blog/ in the url. (IMPORTANT NOTE: You will lose a small amount of linkjuice if you do a 301 redirect. It never transfers 100% of the linkjuice.)
- Make sure you challenge some of your wordpress plugins you are using. Many of the older plugins I have been using over the last 9 months, even though i continue to install updates, have been outdone by new plugins. This is your chance to make sure you have the best. (For example I use to use an old google analytics plug-in that was solid. The new google analyticator is much easier and has more functionality and provides me a dashboard view that is handy.)
- Make sure if you have pages that have backlinks that you bring them over with the same url structure or that you do redirects from the old to the new, so that you still get the link juice.
Hope this helps.
Mark
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
-
Our clients Magento 2 site has lots of obsolete categories. Advice on SEO best practice for setting server level redirects so I can delete them?
Our client's Magento website has been running for at least a decade, so has a lot of old legacy categories for Brands they no longer carry. We're looking to trim down the amount of unnecessary URL Redirects in Magento, so my question is: Is there a way that is SEO efficient to setup permanent redirects at a server level (nginx) that Google will crawl to allow us at some point to delete the categories and Magento URL Redirects? If this is a good practice can you at some point then delete the server redirects as google has marked them as permanent?
Technical SEO | | WillyGx0 -
Client sites on same IP / same c class IP range
Our own site and client sites (that we design) are either hosted on the same IP or within same C Class range of IPs Will there be an issue with Google if we include a link on the client site home page footer (as agreed with client) that links to a specific project page on our website for that client e.g they are not linking to our home page?
Technical SEO | | NeilD0 -
Site Map
For a long time our site map used to be http://www.efurniturehouse.com/sitemap.xml recently our hosting company changed the site map to: http://www.efurniturehouse.com/xml-sitemap.ashx I went ahead and submitted the new site maps to both Google Webmaster and Bing. I submitted the Google one on Monday and it states PENDING. ( A day later this pending) I just submitted the map to Bing. I now have 2 site maps on each. 1)Is having 2 a problem Will they ignore the old site map or can we delete and if so when can we delete I appreciate your input Regards Tony www.eFurnitureHouse.com
Technical SEO | | OCFurniture0 -
Doing SEO for site that publishes articles everyday?
Hi, I was wondering on the best way to do SEO for a site that publishes articles daily. In other words, I add a new url to my site daily. How should I ensure that the new pages are optimized? Do I need to submit each new site to search engines? Any tips?
Technical SEO | | waltergah0 -
Two sites
Hi there just joined had nightmere of a time trying to get a website up and running..... now i have 2 .... one marketing person did and one i did the one i did performing better on google but other onre looks more profetional is there a way i can conbine the 2 under one site..... the one that looks better and getting the benifit of the one thats performing better...... Thanks steve......
Technical SEO | | stevetemple0 -
Advice on SEO for videos on a streaming server
I am looking for some advice on video SEO when the video file is housed on a streaming server. An example page is below. The onlyvideo element on the page is a script reading in the filepath to the streaming server so I am not sure what the best course of action is. Currently, none of our videos are indexed. http://www.sei.cmu.edu/library/abstracts/webinars/Making-Agile-Work-for-You.cfm
Technical SEO | | SEI0 -
How much of an issue is it if a site is somehow connected to a site that was penalized by Google?
I am working with someone that is about to launch a new site, and one of the sites was affected by the Panda update. Does it matter if the two sites are connected? Share the same hosting provider and same Google Webmaster's account?
Technical SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
SEO LINKS
New to S.E.O. so excuse my naivety. I have made lots of new links some of them paid for e.g. Best of the Web but I don’t see any change in the latest competitive link analysis. Some of the links we have been accepted for just do not show. Also the keywords we are trying to promote the most have disappeared off the radar for over 2 weeks now. I think we have followed the optimization suggestions correctly. Please could you enlighten me. Regards Paul www.curtainpolesemporium.co.uk
Technical SEO | | CPE0