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Migrating to new subdomain with new site and new content.
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Our marketing department has decided that a new site with new content is needed to launch new products and support our existing ones. We cannot use the same subdomain(www = old subdomain and ww1 = new subdomain)as there is a technically clash between the windows server currently used, and the lamp stack required to run the new wordpress based CMS and site. We also have an aging piece of SAAS software on the www domain which is makes moving it to it's own subdomain far too risky.
301's have been floated as a way of managing the transition. I'm not too keen on that idea due to the double effect of new subdomain and content, and the SEO impact it might have. I've suggested uploading the new site to the new subdomain while leaving the old site in place. Then gradually migrating sections over before turning parts of the old site off and using a 301 at that point to finalise the move.
The old site would inform user's there is a new version and it would then convert them to the new site(along with a cookie to auto redirect them in future.) while still leaving the old content in place for existing search traffic, bookmarks and visitors via static URLs.
Before turning off sections on the old site we would create rel canonicals to redirect to the new pages based on a a mapped set of URLs(this in itself concerns me as the rel canonical is essentially linking to different content).
Would be grateful for any advice on whether this strategy is flawed or whether another strategy might be more suitable?
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Patrick is right, the migration guide is an excellent source to make sure you've covered all the bases. That said, setting up 301 redirects is gonna have to happen. It may hurt, it may take a lot of time, but it's the best way I've found to minimize any negative impacts to rankings and traffic. There are, of course, ways to speed this up, but I wouldn't suggest looking for a work-around. It sucks to do but that's why new sites and new content on new domains can be such a nightmare.
It's mind-numbing as a task but your manager/client will be very impressed by it. Make sure to look over the inbound links to your site to ensure no pages are missed thereby breaking some of your link network.
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Hi there
I would run through this migration guide step by step as it is quite comprehensive and can definitely help in making this as seamless as possible.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
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