Migrating website to new CMS and to https://
-
Hi,
We are migrating an old website to a new one built in Wordpress soon.
We also added an SSL to change to https://
Most of the url's stay the same. Can we just migrate from http to https on server level, and for the url's that do change just set a 301 redirect? Or are there other things we should take into account?
-
Thanks guys, some helpful tips !
-
Hi Mat_C,
For the HTTPS update, you'll want to ensure that all HTTP URL requests are redirected to the new HTTPS versions. Usually this can be done with a global redirect (often it's easiest to do this via your .htaccess file).
However, because you're migrating from what sounds like a HTML site or non-WordPress CMS, your page paths, file extensions, etc will also be changing - so you'll want to map redirects from the old URLs to their new WordPress counterparts more granularly. This should only be necessary for URLs that have external links (links on other sites) referring to them or URLs that users will have stored in bookmarks or will find in advertisements or other referral sources.
We usually look for URLs that have external links using a tool like Moz's Link Explorer and URLs that have Direct or Referral source traffic via Google Analytics / similar.
When you know what old URLs needs to be redirected to new URLs, there are WordPress plugins (like Redirection) that can make this easier than adding an exhaustive list to your .htaccess file or similar.
Best of Luck,
Mike -
Hi Mat_C
It's great that you are migrating and switching to https.
Regarding the switching on a server level, you can perfectly do it that way. Just remember that you need to address every URL that need to be, redirected to the new site, canonicalized or 404d.
There are a lot of issues to consider take a look in these resources about migrations:
The Website Migration Guide: SEO Strategy, Process, & Checklist - Moz Blog The Ultimate SEO Guide for Successful Web Migrations at #DigitalOlympus - AleydaSolis Migration Best Practices - SMX London 2018 <- backedup by JohnMu in this tweetHope it helps.
Best luck.
GR
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
-
Changing Domains - 301 old https to new https
Brief History: Our company made change to a new domain. Both domains had an SSL configured on it in which the old domain SSL was controlled and created by Shopify which gave us limited control. Because we couldn't redirect the old https:// to the new https:// So basically we duplicated our new HTML website and put canonical ref on all duplicate pages to the final domain to help get search to navigate to the newer domain. Question: In the near future I would like to take down the old domain and do a 301 domain forwarding. What is the correct course of action to complete this? Our old domain was indexed and SERP results were tied to it's https:// url's.
Technical SEO | | bnewt1 -
Website Pop up
I want to install a pop up on my site for collecting email addresses. I use nopcommerce as my platform. I was quoted a price to custom develop it but thought there might just be a simple plugin. I can find them for wordpress but that is all. Does anybody have experience with this?
Technical SEO | | katazoom0 -
Website Migration Query
We are going to migrate our site but we cannot do this gradually, so before we complete the whole migration, we were thinking of launching the new site on a sub-domain and gradually redirect traffic to the sub-domain, starting with 10%, moving up steadily so that we then migrate to the new site within four/five weeks. The new site will have a new URL structure on the same domain, with a complete re-design and the IP address will be changing as well, even though the server geographical location will remain the same. a) Should we noindex the new sub-domain while the new site is on trial? b) Are there any other issues we should look out for? Thanks in Advance 🙂
Technical SEO | | seoec0 -
Duplicate website with http & https
I have a website that only in a specific state in the USA we had to add a certificate for it to appear with https. my question is how to prevent from the website to be penalized on duplicate content with the http version on that specific state. please advise. thanks!
Technical SEO | | taly0 -
WordPress - How to stop both http:// and https:// pages being indexed?
Just published a static page 2 days ago on WordPress site but noticed that Google has indexed both http:// and https:// url's. Usually I only get http:// indexed though. Could anyone please explain why this may have happened and how I can fix? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Clicksjim1 -
Website Redirects
Background information: We have a website (devicelock.com) which is currently our corporate website. The company use to operate under (ntutility.com) which is now being redirected to devicelock.com via a DNS Forward - 302 Redirect. The IT admin (a founder of the company) is reluctant to change it to a 301. The current flow is ntutility.com redirects to protect-me.com then redirects again to devicelock.com. When i search up Devicelock on google, it shows up as ntutlity.com. There is no devicelock.com homepage on google search. Question: Are there any negative implications about this? Is this hurting our SEO in any way? When i do link building, will this have any negative affects? Will my links for devicelock be attributed to devicelock.com?
Technical SEO | | Devicelock0 -
Two companies merge: website A redirect 301 to website B. Problems?
Hi, last december the company I work for and another company merged. The website of company A was taken offline and the home page was 302 redirected to a page on website B. This page had information about the merger and the consequences for customers. The deeper pages of website A were 301 redirected to similar pages on website B. After a while, the traffic from the redirected home page decreased and we thought it was time to change the redirect from a 302 into a 301 redirect to the home page. Because there are still a lot of links to the home page of website A and we wanted to preserve the link juice. Two weeks ago we changed the 302 redirect from website A into a 301 redirect to the home page of website B. Last week the Google webmaster tools account of website B showed the links from the 301 redirected website A. The total amount of links doubled and the top anchor text is the name of company A instead of company B. This, off course, could trigger an alarm at Google. Because we got a lot of new links with a different anchor text. A tactic used by spammers/black-hats. I am a bit worried that our change will be penalized by Google. But our change is legit. It is to the advantage of our customers to find us if they search for the name of company A or click on a link to website A. We didn´t change the change of address of domain A in Google webmaster tools yet. Is it a good idea to change the change of address of domain A into domain B? Are there other precautions we can take?
Technical SEO | | NN-online0 -
Two websites with similar products
I have a website with similar products with different tld . I want to redirect a page for a keyword to another domain by using 301 redirect.Is it okay or google will consider as spam?Please help me out.
Technical SEO | | Alick3000