SEO transfer to new website
-
My website currently has some strong SEO and i will be re-developing the website on a wordpress platform...which will change many of the existing URL. Will this affect the current pages that are well indexed in Google? Does using Wordpress or changing the URL extension (.html to .php) make a difference?
If i want to make a clean transition without effecting our existing SEO...what are some essential steps i need to take? Example. Current page is www.mydomain.com/name.html .... and the new URL would be www.mydomain.com/product/name.php
Thanks
-
Thanks ... many paths to the same result
-
Hi Dan. Great tip! My primitive method was to use to export a list of links in xenu, launch and do a linkchecker off a macro in excel. Looks like your your way is better!
-
Thanks Kevin!
Also, you can crawl the old site with Screaming Frog SEO Spider to check old URLs. Here's how to do that.
- Before switching to the new site, crawl the site with Screaming Frog.
- Save your crawl
- After switching to the new site, crawl the old URLs in list mode in Screaming Frog.
- If they all 301 redirect then you're good. If any of them 404 then redirects are not working or not in place and you need to fix them.
Alternatively you can also grab your old URLs from Google Analytics or Webmaster Tools if you forget to crawl the old site. But I like crawling because it picks up everything.
-
Redirecting the old URLs with 301s is the best way to carry over SEO value. You will transfer most of your link juice and help get traffic to your new pages.
As far as the PHP vs HTM, I don't believe it matters that much, I will say that your new URL structure is probably a little better than your current structure. The more information you can fit naturally into your URL is important, so having the product and the name is better than having just the name.
-
Make sure you 301 redirect as many pages as possible (if not all) to the proper landing page (see Moz's redirect tutorial). In most cases this will pass the majority of link juice (over 90%). Once launched, do a site:domain.com and click on each page to make sure it was redirected correctly. Also, monitor your webmaster tools for any alerts.
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
-
Ranking issue for new website
Hi all, I have got a specific SEO challenge. 6 months ago, we started to build an eCommerce site (located in the UK). In order to speed up the site launch, we copied the entire site over from an existing site based in Ireland. Now, the new UK site has been running for 5 months. Google has indexed many pages, which is good, but we can't rank high (position: between 20-30 for most pages). We thought it was because of content duplication in spite of different regions. So we tried to optimize the pages for the UK site to make them more UK-related and avoid content duplication. I've also used schema to tell google it's a UK-based site and set up Google my business and got more local citations. Besides, If you could give me any suggestions, it'd be perfect.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Insightful_Media
Thank you so much for your time and advice.1 -
Can buying a sponsored post (for non SEO purposes) on a website where you already have a guest post have a negative impact?
Hi, I thinking about buying a sponsored post about our product on a website we have previously contributed a guest post. Can a new sponsored post make Google think our original guest post was paid for? Thanks, Ori
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dizi3770 -
SEO time
I wanto to be in the top of the google search. I am usiing a lot of SEO tools but... I have done it during one month. Do I have to wait more?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CarlosZambrana0 -
Can I use the old website content on the new website, after deleting it from the server?
My website nowwhatstudio.com hit by google pure spam and google applied manual spam action to the website. I create new website (nowwhatmoments.com) with the same content from the old spam action website (nowwhatstudio.com). As google removed my old website content from search indexed. Can I use the same content for a new website? If I delete my old website from the server, after that Can I use the old website content for a new website? Or Can make edits the old website content and make it 80% original for a new website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bondhoward0 -
Move to new domain with new design and url
I have an e-commerce website that is template based and I have absolutely no control over it. Each product have quite good ranking in google. However, we are creating new website using asp.net mvc and host in azure. It has totally new design. Since I have no control over my old website, I cannot force the server to redirect each product page to my new website product page. This is what I have done so far. I told my old website provider to point my domain (ex. domainA.com) to new nameserver at dyndns I created a new zone and add a http redirect service to new domain (http://www.domainB.com) with 301 redirect I'm pretty sure that this is not enough since there is a difference in url like this Old: www.domainA.com/product/70/my-product-name New: www.domainB.com/product/1/my-new-product-name New route config: {product}/{id}/{name} As you can see, the structure is similar but the product id and name is different. Do I need to catch the incoming id and name from old website and 301 redirect it again to the correct one? If so, this will cause double 301 redirect and would this be a SEO problem? Thank you in advance for your answer.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | as142208080 -
Do I need to update my previous blog posts with my new SEO strategy'?
Hi Everyone, I have published 46 articles so far on my blog. Recently I changed my SEO strategy including changing main page titles, changing the targeting pages for each keyword, ... . Do you think it is a good thing to go back through all of my blog posts and change the internal link building and modify them accordingly. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlirezaHamidian0 -
A First For Me: Client Wants New Website & Completely Updated Content
A client that I worked with on another project has approached me asking if I can handle the transition from his old website to his new website. He already had the new website designed and the URL structure is completely different than the old one. Normally this would not be a problem, just 301 redirect each page to the new page. However, this client has COMPLETELY redone his website from the ground up including navigation, pages and page content. The old website has been around for 8 years and is ranking for some good keywords. The reason he decided to build the new site is because the URL of his old domain is very long and for whatever reason he didn't like it (I'm assuming this would be misspellings of people trying to get back to his website and long email addresses, but he didn't clarify). I have never dealt with such a drastic change before and wanted the SEOMoz community input on the best way to pass authority/link juice from the old domain to the new one. Thanks in advance for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bo-Jangles0 -
Do interstitials hurt SEO?
If you go to www.homeportfolio.com and click on one of the links in the footer. you'll notice you are presented with an interstitial. Can you tell me if that hurts our SEO and if we lose any link juice or suffer in any other way as a result of this linking method? my main concern is whether having anchor text that says "bathroom ideas" that goes to an interstitial that doesn't mention bathroom ideas is non-relevant... even if it refreshes 12 seconds to a page that is.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KaplanSEM0