Gradual roll out of new webpages on temporary subdomain
-
I’m working for a company who is looking to gradually replace an existing website with a new website.
They will replace the homepage, then a section, then another section, and so on, until the new site is complete.
All new pages will sit on a temporary subdomain.
So, for example, the URL for the homepage at the moment is www.domain.com, but as soon as the new homepage is ready, that will be launched on a temporary URL / subdomain - www2.domain.com - replacing the old homepage.
The new pages will then gradually increase on www2.domain.com (so journeys will inevitably move across domains) until the whole of the new website is ready on www2.domain.com - at which point it will move on to www.domain.com.
I know this isn’t a good way of doing things - I would much prefer the new site is completely built and then it just replaces the old site with the necessary 301 redirects in place - but the company wants to see the gradual roll out of new page designs.
So, my question is, what’s the best way to manage this without negatively impacting rankings for the existing domain (www.domain.com)?
-
The most important is to redirect all your backlinks via 301 to the new URLs. As you've been told, why not develop the entire site in the subdomain and then move it to the new one, so you don't play with redirects and traffic from one subdomain to another.
-
I'm not sure how the search engines look at 302 redirects which are in place for a prolonged time. I'll be interested to see if anyone else on this thread has additional insights about that. What I can say is that I've used 302 redirects in some cases for prolonged period of time (although not as long as 12-18 months, perhaps more like 4-6 months) and have not experienced issues from that approach. But others on this forum may have more experience with 302 redirects over that period of time.
The other thing I'll mention is that some tools like Moz Pro will report 302 Redirects as "issues". My perspective is to look through these because some might be unintentional, and then to ignore when they are inentional/strategic.
-
Hi seoelevated,
Thanks for your response. I have been considering a 302 approach, but I am concerned about how long I can leave 302s in place. If from start to finish, the roll out takes 12 - 18 months, will that cause any problems?
Thanks!
-
Unless I'm missing something in the thread here, it seems to me this would be better served by 302. My rationale is that you will be eventually going back to the www URL and you want that to retain the full equity of all its links. So, during the interim period, you would have 302 redirects, and then when you switch back to www, you would simply remove all the redirects.
The only downside I see to that is that during the interim period, one thing you won't be able to measure as the site is gradually updated, is the incremental impact of the new page designs on SEO. You will still be able to measure the new page design in terms of conversion rate and other UX factors, but measuring impact on SEO wouldn't really be feasible.
-
Yes, I got it. That's the only option to do this if you want to pass link juice to www2.domain.com while you are working on the new site. There is no way to not lose traffic if you want to redirect everything on the page by page basis. Traffic will bounce back after you move back to www.domain.com, but it can takes time.
Ross
-
Hi Ross.
Everything will have a 301.
For example:
- When I launch the new homepage on the temporary subdomain, I will add a 301 redirect from www.domain.com to www2.domain.com.
- When I launch a new section page, I will add a new 301 redirect from www.domain.com/section1 to www2.domain.com/section1.
- When I launch a new product page, I will add a new 301 redirect from www.domain.com/product1 to www2.domain.com/product1.
And then, eventually, when everything is moved back to the www domain, I will setup the following 301 redirects:
- Homepage - From www2.domain.com to www.domain.com
- Section page - From www2.domain.com/section1 to www.domain.com/section1
- Product page - From www2.domain.com/product1 to www.domain.com/product1
Does this make sense? So, everything will have a 301 redirect.
I'm just concerned about the fact I'm basically having to 301 redirect a whole site away from it's original domain to a temporary subdomain, and then back again. Should I be concerned about this?
-
The only problem I see here that you will lose traffic by setting 301s to www2 and then removing those 301s.
Ross
-
Hi Ross.
Thanks again for the response.
There will only ever be one version of a page, and each time an old page is replaced with a new version, I will 301 redirect from the www version to the www2 version.
My concern is, at the end of the web build all pages on www will have been 301 redirected to www2, and then I’ll need to 301 redirect them all back again to www when the new site is moved off the temporary subdomain. Do you see any problems with this approach?
-
If not then I would deindex completely the www2.domain.com and do not set up any redirects at all. Just have your www.domain.com working in a normal way until you migrate your www2.domain.com to www.domain.com. Also, If you planning to change the URLs on the new version of the website then you need to set up 301 redirects from old URLs to new URLs on your server ( apache or ngnix) so you do not get any broken links.
Ross
-
Are you planning to have both versions of the site working at the same time?
Ross
-
Thanks for the response.
But is it okay to 301 redirect, for example, the homepage to a temporary www2 subdomain, and then back again once the whole site is ready to move back to the www domain?
-
Hi there,
The most important is to redirect all your backlinks via 301 to the new URLs. Also, you can take a look at this guide.
Ross
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
-
Redesign Just Starting - Should I Leave The Previous Incomplete Site or Setup A Temporary Holding Page and Redirect Previous URL'S?
Hi All I've picked up a new website project and wanted to ask about the best way to proceed with the current site during the development process. The current site is incomplete although it has been live for a while and has over 80 pages in the sitemap. Link to site https://tinyurl.com/ychwftup The business owner wants to take down the current site and simply add a landing page stating "new website coming soon". From an SEO perspective, am I better to keep the current site live until the new site is ready? Or would it not make any difference if I setup the landing page and add 301 redirects from each page in the sitemap to the landing page. Many Thanks In Advance For Any Assistance
Web Design | | ruislip180 -
Does redirecting the existing URLs in the website without reducing our current rankings? The new website runs on the bubble, so it seems there is no provisions to redirect the existing URLs to this platform?
Hi Moz Fans, There are some clarification needed in a website revamping and loosing of current website rank. Please go through the questions and would be great if you like to share some insights on it. 1. We would like to revamp our existing website by joining hands with the bubble visual programming platform. Thus, kindly let us know if there are provisions to redirect the existing URLs to this platform. We would also like to know if this kind of redirecting affects the current website ranking. If yes, how can we redirect the existing URLs in bubble without reducing our current rankings? 2. As a part of the revamping of our website, we would like to enquire about the possibilities of its relaunch via bubble. Does it cause any changes for the current rankings of our website if we redirect the existing URLs via bubble? If yes, is there any provision to redirect the URLs without affecting the current ranking of the website?
Web Design | | OceanAirTravels0 -
New Mobile Site Traffic Drop
With all the talk about how much mobile is important and how it is going to return its own search results, we finally decided to make a mobile site for one of our smaller websites to test the water. We put it up about two weeks ago and did Vary HTTP header method to serve the site. Before the change, on the average week we would get 270-300 mobile visitors from organic search results and we converted 0.78% to sales. Since the change, we are now getting about 70 mobile organic visitors per week but converting 2.47% So what can I say but WOW. We are converting way way better but our organic mobile search traffic has dropped off a ton. Luckily our desktop and tablet traffic(we serve the desktop version of the site to tablets) has stayed the same and has not dipped. Do any of you guys have experience or gone through launching a mobile site before? Did you see the immediate drop in organic mobile traffic and did you recover your traffic back to previous levels? If so, do you know how long it takes to recover? I am thinking it is a big change and will take time for Google to adjust but I am not sure since the mobile version has so much less text now on the home page and on category or product list pages or whatever you guys want to call them.
Web Design | | KurtL0 -
Old site to new WordPress site - Client concerned about Yahoo Ranking
Hello, Back Story I have a client (law firm) who has a large .html website. He has been doing his own SEO for years and it shows. I think the only reason he reached out to a professional is because he got a huge penalty from Google last fall and fell very far down in rankings. Although, he still retains a #1 spot in Yahoo for his site for the keyword phrase he wants. I have been creating a new WordPress theme for the client and creating all new pages and updating the formatting/SEO. From the beginning I have told the client that when we delete the old site and install a new WordPress site (same domain name, but different page hierarchy) he will take a bump in the search engines until all the 301 redirects get sorted out. I told him I can't guarantee any time frame of how long the dip in SEO will last. Some sites bounce right back while others take longer. Last week, during a discussion, he tells me that if he loses his #1 ranking on Yahoo for any length of time he thinks he will go out of business. Needless to say I was a little taken back. When it comes to SEO I use best practice techniques, do my research, stay on top of trends but I never guarantee rankings when moving to a new site. I'm thinking of ways I can help elevate any type of huge SEO drop off and help the client. Here is what I was thinking of suggesting to the client and I would love some feedback. Main Question He has another domain he isn't doing anything with. It's pretty much his domain name with pc added. I was thinking about using that domain to create a simple 1-2 page WordPress website with brand new content (no duplicate content) aimed at attracting his keyword phrase. I would do as much SEO as I could with a 1-2 page site and give it a month or so to see if this smaller site can get into the top #10 in Yahoo, or higher. Then, when we move the site he will still have a website on the first page of Yahoo for his keyword phrase. I hope I explained it clearly 🙂 I would be open to any suggestions anyone may have. Thanks
Web Design | | Bill_K0 -
Is it cloaking/hiding text if textual content is no longer accessible for mobile visitors on responsive webpages?
My company is implementing a responsive design for our website to better serve our mobile customers. However, when I reviewed the wireframes of the work our development company is doing, it became clear to me that, for many of our pages, large parts of the textual content on the page, and most of our sidebar links, would no longer be accessible to a visitor using a mobile device. The content will still be indexable, but hidden from users using media queries. There would be no access point for a user to view much of the content on the page that's making it rank. This is not my understanding of best practices around responsive design. My interpretation of Google's guidelines on responsive design is that all of the content is served to both users and search engines, but displayed in a more accessible way to a user depending on their mobile device. For example, Wikipedia pages have introductory content, but hide most of the detailed info in tabs. All of the information is still there and accessible to a user...but you don't have to scroll through as much to get to what you want. To me, what our development company is proposing fits the definition of cloaking and/or hiding text and links - we'd be making available different content to search engines than users, and it seems to me that there's considerable risk to their interpretation of responsive design. I'm wondering what other people in the Moz community think about this - and whether anyone out there has any experience to share about inaccessable content on responsive webpages, and the SEO impact of this. Thank you!
Web Design | | mmewdell0 -
Learning Center on Subdomain or New Domain
Hello, With so much emphasis for SEO to develop unique, information content I am working to build out a "Learning Center' for one of my clients in the finance industry. As you can guess, this is quite a competitive space and their rankings have become somewhat stagnant so we are looking for new ways to develop original, share-worthy content for the site. So my question is, in order for them to retain the most SEO value should we develop this on a subdomain such as learning.website.com or a new domain altogether. Note: We do not want to develop this under the current site domain as it we want o only post informational content & courses and keep these pieces outside of the "sales" side of their website. Therefore, I thought the subdomain would be the best bet so that we would retain the most value for SEO... however, some of my colleagues disagree. Some vote it should be within a directory under website.com. Some say a new site & domain altogether. My vote is to place this under a subdomain such as http://learning.website.com with the idea that the site's authority will influence the root http://website.com. The argument I was provided against the subdomain was: "essentially adding a subdomain would mean you're sort of starting over again in terms of building authority. adding a folder will ride the coattails off the already established authority." Lastly, for clarification, the current domain is set up as http://website.com so the subdomain would be http://learning.website.com, the directory would be set up as http://website.com/learning/ and a whole new domain would be http://newwebsite.com. This is for a Wordpress site. Thoughts? All feedback is much appreciated!
Web Design | | TinaMumm0 -
What is the best way to point newly built website on new domain name to the original more well known domain?
Live website on abc.com domain is being totally redone and moved to a new platform. to facilitate full testing and compliance, the new look and content was built on a different url - xyz.com for example. Now that all content is approved and testing, we want people visiting the abc.com domain to see the xyz.com website without necessarily redirecting abc.com to xyz.com What is the best to do this? Thanks all
Web Design | | wkismb0 -
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