Moving to a new site while keeping old site live
-
For reasons I won't get into here, I need to move most of my site to a new domain (DOMAIN B) while keeping every single current detail on the old domain (DOMAIN A) as it is. Meaning, there will be 2 live websites that have mostly the same content, but I want the content to appear to search engines as though it now belongs to DOMAIN B. Weird situation. I know.
I've run around in circles trying to figure out the best course of action. What do you think is the best way of going about this?
- Do I simply point DOMAIN A's canonical tags to the copied content on DOMAIN B and call it good?
- Should I ask sites that link to DOMAIN A to change their links to DOMAIN B, or start fresh and cut my losses?
- Should I still file a change of address with GWT, even though I'm not going to 301 redirect anything?
-
Thanks for your rseponses!
Hey RobertJakobson, doesn't Google advise against having canonical and noindex on the same page? And if you setup canonicals + change of address, what would be the purpose of noindexing?
-
Great question. Unless and until site B develops it's own new link profile and/or gets site A's pages 301'd to site B, in most moderately competitive searches, site B won't produce search-wise like site A (assuming site A produces).
I would therefor, if at all possible in your particular situation, set search expectations accordingly low and/or move as quickly as possible to 301ing the old pages to their new versions. Canonical tags to tell Google that site B is the one true copy of the content will of course not substitute for a good link profile plus old pages 301'd. It will be content without authority.
Maybe you can't ever get rid of site A as your question implies, in which case realize site B will not perform as well search-wise and set expectations accordingly.
Either way, get a list of all the external/incoming links to site A and work to get them updated to site B. This may be a lot of slow pick and shovel work, depending on what's in place already.
If you can anticipate after some reasonable amount of time 301ing old pages to new pages, skip Robert's 2 & 3 as you'd want Google still crawling the old urls to discover the eventual 301s.
Best of luck!
-
Hi, here're the 3 steps that should work easily:
- Add the canonical URL-s as you already know how. Wait for the new domain to rank. But don't stop there.
- After you've seen new domain rising place robots.txt and no-index meta tags on the old site instructing Google not to index it.
- Use Google Webmaster Tools to request Site Removal for the old site: under Google index -> Remove URL-s place the full domain of your old site. You should see that instead of a "page removal" you will be asked to confirm a "site removal". More instructions here from Google.
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
-
4000 new duplicate products on our ecommerce site, potential impact?
Hello, We've currently got 9500 products live on our site at the moment with ~2000 in this category that we're adding the new products in. All of these products we're adding are coming from a site that we own and we're trying to expand the range on our site (the 9500 product site has a lot more visitors than the 4000 product site). However, all these products imported I believe are atleast duplicates from the 4000 product site, but the first ones I have seen (500) are manufacturer duplicates. What issues are we potentially going to run in to? Just for extra information: We have no control over canonical/noindex/robots etc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ThomasHarvey0 -
SEO - is it site or page
Hi When we're talking about SEO does the search engine only look at the whole site in general or do they look at the individual page when we're talking about SERP? So if you have a keyword "my search term" Does the search engine look at the site first or the page with the term on then rank you or is it the page then the site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
301 old site to new site?
I have client with an old site - www.bestfamilylawattorney.com - which had a lot of spammy links (and bad rankings). Instead of fixing those issues, we started a new URL - www.berenjifamilylaw.com - with new content and redesign. Should I do a 301 redirect from old to new domain? If the old site was being penalized, would a 301 transfer that penalty? I just want to make sure I don't end up hurting the new site after doing all the work to start fresh. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14400 -
What has a better chance of ranking alongside my main site for my company name, a subdomain or new domain?
Hi Moz, Do search engines really treat subdomains as separate domains in this regard? Or are we more likely to get more real estate on the first page with a new domain? Our goal is to have our main site and this new subdomain or domain ranking in positions 1 and 2 for our company name. This is going to be a careers site/portal. Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Getting Rid Of Spammy 301 Links From An Old Site
A relatively new site I'm working on has been hit really hard by Panda, due to over optimization of 301 external links which include exact keyword phrases, from an old site. Prior to the Panda update, all of these 301 redirects worked like a charm, but now all of these 301's from the old url are killing the new site, because all the hyper-text links include exact keyword matches. A couple weeks ago, I took the old site completely down, and removed the htaccess file, removing the 301's and in effect breaking all of these bad links. Consequently, if one were to type this old url, you'd be directed to the domain registrar, and not redirected to the new site. My hope is to eliminate most of the bad links, that are mostly on spammy sites, that aren't worth linking to. My thought is these links would eventually disappear from G. My concern is that this might not work, because G won't re-index these links, because once they're indexed by G, they'll be there forever. My fear is causing me to conclude I should hedge my bets, and just disavow these sites using the disavow tool in WMT. IMO, the disavow tool is an action of last resort, because I don't want to call attention to myself, since this site doesn't have a manual penalty inflected on it. Any opinions or advise would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alrockn0 -
Severe health issues are found on your site. - Check site health (GWT)
Hi, We run a Magento website - When i log in to Google Webmaster Tools, I am getting this message: Severe health issues are found on your site. - <a class="GNHMM2RBFH">Check site health
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs2010
</a>Is robots.txt blocking important pages? Some important page is blocked by robots.txt. Now, this is the weird part - the page being blocked is the admin page of magento - under
www.domain.com/index.php/admin/etc..... Now, this message just wont go away - its been there for days now - so why does Google think this is an "important page"? It doesnt normally complain if you block other parts of the site ?? Any ideas? THanks0 -
Relaunching old site - Will it regain former link equity?
We've got an older site with significant link equity. It 301 redirects to our current website, passing all traffic, link value, etc. The 301 redirects have been in place for several years. Since the original redirects were setup, the current website has acquired massive link equity above and beyond the redirects. I am considering removing all the 301 redirects and bringing the old site back to life (same URLs, content, design as before). I would also keep the current website live as is. The goal is to capture more SERP visibility by having 2 website "brands" in the same market. Will the old site regain it's former link equity or will we effectively be starting from scratch? In other words, does Google consider how long 301 redirects have been in place?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jeff_DomainTools0 -
Migrating a site from a standalone site to a subdivision of large .gov.uk site
The scenario We’ve been asked by a client, a Non-Government Organisation who are being absorbed by a larger government ministry, for help with the SEO of their site. They will be going from a reasonably large standalone site to a small sub-directory on a high authority government site and they want some input on how best to maintain their rankings. They will be going from the Number 1 ranked site in their niche (current site domainRank 59) to being a sub directory on a domainRank 100 site). The current site will remain, but as a members only resource, behind a paywall. I’ve been checking to see the impact that it had on a related site, but that one has put a catch all 302 redirect on it’s pages so is losing the benefit of a it’s historical authority. My thoughts Robust 301 redirect set up to pass as much benefit as possible to the new pages. Focus on rewriting content to promote most effective keywords – would suggest testing of titles, meta descriptions etc but not sure how often they will be able to edit the new site. ‘We have moved’ messaging going out to webmasters of existing linking sites to try to encourage as much revision of linking as possible. Development of link-bait to try and get the new pages seen. Am I going about this the right way? Thanks in advance. Phil
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smrs-digital0