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.
How long should an old site redirecting to a new site remain activated on a server?
-
Once I switch a site to a new domain (with links to corresponding/relative pages), will I have to keep the old site live forever for those links to work, or how long should I wait before I inactivate the old site on our server?
-
301 redirects are called permanent, but that's not really the case. They are permanent only as long as they are in place. If you want to see this, do everything as Andy said and then remove the redirect. You'll notice your traffic drop and when you put the redirects back the traffic will recover. Go ahead and do this every year and you'll see that each time it drops. We've dealt with drops that happened from domains that haven't been active in over 5 years, so as EGOL alluded to, keep them forever.
-
Google has an extremely long memory for old URL's being live and linking. It is anoying realy.
Links from websites to your old domain are still there, you want to hold on to that value. Thus you will keep the old domain redirected. You do not need a server for that, just the domain pointing to the server and redirecting it on your server. Your web hosting support can help you with that (if not, switch to wp engine)
-
Mine will still be there when I attend my funeral.
-
Not at all - on the new site, setup a list of pages to be redirected (301) to corresponding pages on the new domain and make sure you advise Google through Webmaster Tools that the site has moved.
However, don't turn everything off on the old server until you have confirmed all is working on the new one.
-Andy
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
-
Site Migration due to Corporate Acquisition
Hey everyone, Wanted to check-in on something that I've been thinking way too much about lately. I'll do my best to provide background, but due to some poor planning, it is rather confusing to wrap your head around. There are currently three companies involved, Holding Corp (H Corp) and two operating companies, both in the same vertical but one B2B and the other is B2C. B2C corp has been pushed down the line and we're focusing primarily on H Corp and B2B brand. Due to an acquisition of H Corp and all of it's holdings, things are getting shuffled and Ive been brought in to ensure things are done correctly. What's bizarre is H Corp and it's web property are the dominant authority in SERPs for the B2B brand. As in B2B brand loses on brand searches to H Corp, let alone any product/service related terms. As such, they want to effectively migrate all related content from H Corp site to B2B brand site and handover authority as effectively as possible. Summary: Domain Migration from H Corp site to B2B Brand site. Ive done a few migrations in my past and been brought in to recover a few post-launch so I have decent experience and a trusted process. One of my primary objectives initially is change as little as possible with content, url structure (outside the root) etc so 301s are easy but also so it doesn't look like we're trying to play any games. Here's the thing, the URL structure for H Corp is downright bad from both a UX perspective and a general organizational perspective. So Im feeling conflicted and wanted to get a few other opinions. Here are my two paths as I see and Id love opinions on both: stick with a similar URL structure to H Corp through the migration (my normal process) but deviate from pretty much every best practice for structuring URLs with keywords, common sense and logic. Pro: follow my process (which has always worked in the past) Con: don't implement SEO/On-page best practices at this stage and wait for the site redesign to implement best practices (more work) Implement new URL structure now and deviate from my trusted process. Do you see a third option? Am I overthinking it? Other important details: B2B brand is under-going a site redesign, mostly aesthetic but their a big corporation and will likely take 6-9 months to get up. Any input greatly appreciated. Cheers, Brent
Web Design | | pastcatch1 -
Incorporating Spanish Page/Site
We bought an exact match domain (in Spanish) to incorporate with regular website for a particular keyword. This is our first attempt at this, and while we do have Spanish speaking staff that will translate/create a nice, quality page, we're not going to redo everything in Spanish page. Any advice on how to implement this? Do I need to create a whole other website in Spanish? Will that be duplicate content if I do? Can I just set it up to show the first page in Spanish, but if they click on anything else it redirects to our site? I'm pretty clueless on this, so if anything I've suggested is off-the-wall or a violation, I'm really just spit-balling, trying to figure out how to implement this. Thanks, Ruben
Web Design | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
302 redirects, canonicalise or redirect (301)?
Hey Guys, I am fairly new to 'technical' SEO as I was lucky enough in my old role to have technical expertise in the team for things like this, now I am learning myself and it is a slow and painful process, so your expertise is soooo much appreciated! My I.T. dept say that I have 3 instances on my website where the Hybris platform is creating a 302 redirect automatically - the first: URL doesn't exist - Hybris creates a temp 302 - the system does not create case sensitive url's | http://www.example.fr/Example/Marques/0180/brand/CHANEL | URL doesn't exist | TRUE | 302 | | http://www.example.fr/Example/Marques/0015/brand/Giorgio-Armani | URL doesn't exist | TRUE | 302 |
Web Design | | eLab_London
| http://www.example.fr/fr/Example/marken/0507/brand/lancome | URL doesn't exist | TRUE | 302 | I believe these are being redirected due to the fact that capital letters are being created in the url. Multi-lingual redirects I have a German and French version of my site and whenever any switches from one URL to the other using our language selector a 302 is created. Dynamic URL elements Dynamic url elements and special characters are being created in the URL, I am not sure where this is happening, but my I.T. department would like me to go and see whether this is something that can be created by a browser. If anyone has any similar problems or have any advice or insights even, I would love to hear from you! Thanks 🙂0 -
Do I need to 301 redirect www.domain.com/index.html to www.domain.com/ ?
So, interestingly enough, the Moz crawler picked up my index.html file (homepage) and reported duplicate content, of course. But, Google hasn't seemed to index the www.domain.com/index.html version of my homepage, just the www.domain.com version. However, it looks like I do have links going specifically to www.domain.com/index.html and I want to make sure those are getting counted towards my overall domain strength. Is it necessary to 301 redirect in the scenario described above?
Web Design | | Small_Business_SEO0 -
Wordpress - redirecting tags
I just ran a webmaster tool from Yoast SEO premium and notice I have a lot of problems with tags (restricted-robots-txt) For example : http://www.soobumimphotography.com/tag/wedding-group-photo/ Do I have to redirect to http://www.soobumimphotography.com/wedding-group-photo/ Should I do this to each and every posts Thank you
Web Design | | soobumim0 -
How to rewrite/redirect a folder name with .htaccess
I have a folder in my site that I want to rename. I don’t want to just rewrite the URL and keep my old folder name, I want to change the folder name and then do whatever is necessary with .hataccess to not lose search engine rankings. The folder name I want to change has a space in it and also is misspelled (whoops x2) Example. Mysite.com/old foldr/page.html Mysite.com/newfolder/page.html How would I go about doing this with .htaccess? Do I just switch the folder name on my server and then set up a redirect, or do I do a rewrite? Sorry now familiar with the terms or .htacces. Thanks all
Web Design | | SheffieldMarketing0 -
My Site Is Using A Lot of Hosting Bandwidth. Suggestions?
My website http://www.socialseomanagement.com/ is using tons of bandwidth. I received a message from the hosting company saying I exceeded my monthly bandwidth and it has only been a few days. Can anyone take a look and make suggestions? Thanks
Web Design | | JChronicle0 -
SEO and Server Connectivity....
Good Morning/Evening Mozzers, I arrive at work this morning with 5 emails from GWT for my separate domains reading, **"Googlebot can't access your site - **Over the last 24 hours, Googlebot encountered 39 errors while attempting to connect to your site. Your site's overall connection failure rate is 15.1%." I have passed this on to the Web Dev team to resolve ASAP. My Question, will server connectivity issues harm my rankings? Is there a danger if this continues that URL's could be de-indexed? Input would be greatly appreciated.
Web Design | | RobertChapman0