Will There Be Much Impact When Moving Site To New Root Folder?
-
Hi, ok so I have a pretty big site that is located on my sever /root/current-folder/. I want to rebuild the site completely as it's using software that is out of date and not our main focus anymore (OpenCart).
We want to move to a Wordpress platform, but want to have as little impact on the SEO as possible.
Our current strategy is:
- List all URLs/Titles/Meta indexed with Google on current site
- Create new folder on the server /root/new-folder/
My question is... if I move to a new folder on the server (same TLD) and then re-route the TLD to go to this new folder, will there be more of an impact on SEO that if I start a fresh in the current folder?
Thanks
-
Hi Alex
If I understand this, you're changing the literal file folder on your server, but to the user and in the browser the URLs and folders stay the same?
If so, there's no danger here. Just redirect and URLs that do change.
-Dan
PS (I think James, understandably, misunderstood the question - you only need to worry if URLs in the browser change.)
-
Thanks James. My issue is that I need to keep the current site (Opencart) rolling whilst I build the new one in the background (Wordpress).
If I install Wordpress on the current root folder where the current website is, it files will conflict and I'll be in a right mess.
-
What is the best way forward then? I have a root folder - then inside that root folder are tonnes of OpenCart files for the current website.
Do I just create a new folder in the root, call it v2 and install a Wordpress site there? Then have the domain name point to that new folder? Obviously keeping all urls in tact and 301 redirecting any unused previous urls.
Alex
-
Yes this will be exactly the same structure - just in a new folder on the same server
-
Hi Alex,
I would say if you maintain the exact same url structure e.g.:
before:
after:
You will be good with the search engines, independent in which server folder the new site is (current or new).
Hope this helps
-
Hi Alex,
Honestly I am not sure if I understand your problem correctly.
What does this mean "...I start a fresh in the current folder?"
1) /root/new-folder/
2) /root/new-folder/??? or what?
If you just put your files (new installation) in another folder and make your domain point to that folder, you should only taking care of redirecting the old urls to the new ones. There is nothing else to do in my opinion.
Cheers,
Cesare
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
-
New more "helpful" internal linking causing SERP & traffic drop?
Still dealing with the weird traffic drop on my website. I have removed a bunch of old links from a defunct blog, 301 thin pages, added text to remaining pages. I'm still stumped. So awhile ago I freshened up my website and thought I was "helping people" by making sure they could CONTACT the studio more easily... I added more links to the "contact page" I thought this would help conversions...This changed the number of links to my entire site....Would this be the problem with my ranking/traffic drop? http://bayareaboudoir.com/babinternal1.pdf
Web Design | | Squee1 -
Is there something fundamentally wrong with our site architecture?
Hi everyone! Could a few of you brilliant people take a look at the architecture of this site http://www.ccisolutions.com, and let me know if you see any obvious problems? I have run the site through XENU, and all of our most important pages, including categories and products, are no deeper than level 3. Everything deeper than that is, in most cases, an image, a pdf or an orphaned page (of which we have thousands). Could having thousands upon thousands of orphaned pages be having a more hurtful effect on our rankings than our site architecture? I have made loud noises and suggested that duplicate content, site speed and dilution of page authority due to all those orphaned pages are some of the primary reasons we don't rank as well as we could. But, I think those suggestions just aren't sexy or dramatic enough, so there is much shaking of heads and discussion that it must be something fundamentally wrong with site architecture. I know re-arranging the furniture is more fun than scrubbing the floors, but I think our problems are more about fundamental cleanup than moving things around What do you think?
Web Design | | danatanseo0 -
New Website Redesign: Any Design Comments or SEO Suggestions?
Hi! We recently launched our new website after MONTHS of work. Now that it is live, we are looking to fine tune the design and SEO efforts. This is our new website. And for reference, this is our old website. Any and all comments on design and SEO would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your help! Mike
Web Design | | Mike.Goracke0 -
After a website redesign, what is the impact and is it a good practice to use /v2/ naming convention?
Hi mightyful SEOMoz community. We just launched a redesign of our commercial website from https://www.data-field.com to https://www.data-field.com/v2/ All URLs from previous website were 301 permanent redirect to the appropriate page in the new website, and the root domains ( /, /v2/ ) send the users to their own language content /v2/en/, /v2/fr/, /v2/zh/ Up to here everything is fine. But then I setup the usual "Share" buttons, only to find that they were displaying a "0" count. Then I realized that it was because of the root URL change from / to /v2/ My question is the following: 1. Is using /v2/ a good practice? 2. If yes, then should I link the Social tool to https://www.data-field.com/ ( only ) instead of linking it to the actual page in the address bar? Thanks for your answers.
Web Design | | NicolasE0 -
Linking root and domain authority
Hi SEOMOZ community, Can you please advise on how to increase Linking root domains and domain authority. much appreciated.
Web Design | | wahin10 -
How will engines deal with duplicate head elements e.g. title or canonicals?
Obviously duplicate content is never a good thing...on separate URL's. Question is, how will the engines deal with duplicate meta tags on the same page. Example Head Tag: <title>Example Title - #1</title> <title>Example Title - #2</title> My assumption is that Google (and others) will take the first instance of the tag, such that "Example Title - #1" and canonical = "http://www.example.com" would be considered for ranking purposes while the others are disregarded. My assumption is based on how SE's deal with duplicate links on a page. Is this a correct assumption? We're building a CMS-like service that will allow our SEO team to change head tag content on the fly. The easiest solution, from a dev perspective, is to simply place new/updated content above the preexisting elements. I'm trying to validate/invalidate the approach. Thanks in advance.
Web Design | | PCampolo0 -
Does changing nameservers and a new site design affect SEO dramatically
We are about to change nameservers and upload a new website design design, completely rebuilt website to that new hosting, will this effect our seo efforts previously and have an effect on our SEO rankings?
Web Design | | CompleteOffice0 -
How much content is too much? Best Pages For Content?
To my understanding content has a lot to do with organic rankings if written correctly. My question is, how much content is too much and what pages are best to place content. Our company sells very costly products. Our customers call to purchase, we do not have an eCommerce site. Write now we have on average 350 words per page. We have about 200+ pages. Each page is written for that general category and each product has its own unique content. It seems to me that the pages with less content, tend to rank a bit better. As we are in the process of redoing our website, is there any recommendations on writing content, or adjusting the amount of text. I am thinking a lot of our text is informative only to a certain extent. Would writing content just for the main category page be better, and then on the actual product page, have only about 250 words as a description? Are there any other recommendations for SEO that are fairly new? Besides the Title, Description, Heading Tags, Image Alts, URLS etc.
Web Design | | hfranz0