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  4. Best approach to launch a new site with new urls - same domain

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Best approach to launch a new site with new urls - same domain

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  • STPseo
    STPseo last edited by Mar 1, 2011, 6:15 PM

    www.sierratradingpost.com

    We have a high volume e-commerce website with over 15K items, an average of 150K visits per day and 12.6 pages per visit. We are launching a new website this spring which is currently on a beta sub domain and we are looking for the best strategy that preserves our current search rankings while throttling traffic (possibly 25% per week) to measure results.

    The new site will be soft launched as we plan to slowly migrate traffic to it via a load balancer. This way we can monitor performance of the new site while still having the old site as a backup. Only when we are fully comfortable with the new site will we submit the 301 redirects and migrate everyone over to the new site. We will have a month or so of running both sites.

    Except for the homepage the URL structure for the new site is different than the old site.

    What is our best strategy so we don’t lose ranking on the old site and start earning ranking on the new site, while avoiding duplicate content and cloaking issues?

    Here is what we got back from a Google post which may highlight our concerns better:

    http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=62d0a16c4702a17d&hl=en&fid=62d0a16c4702a17d00049b67b51500a6

    Thank You,

    sincerely,

    Stephan Woo Cude

    SEO Specialist

    scude@sierratradingpost.com

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • LeslieVS
      LeslieVS last edited by Nov 30, 2011, 11:37 AM Nov 30, 2011, 11:37 AM

      Hi there,

      I was just reading this old thread to get some info, but I'd love it if you could share you actual results from the launch. What did you do and how much did traffic change? How long before you were back to normal?

      I usually find that with a new website and all new URLs, I end up seeing maybe a month or sodip in traffic that can be up to 10%. But that seems to be less and less as time goes on. The search engines are usually on top of it though, they recrawl and recatalog quite quickly.

      Would love to hear from you.

      Thanks!

      Leslie

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • Tom-Anthony
        Tom-Anthony @STPseo last edited by Mar 3, 2011, 8:19 PM Mar 3, 2011, 8:19 PM

        Just to chime in on this, albeit maybe a little late now... I had the same thought as I was reading through this with using rel=canonical to point the old pages to the new for now, so the search engines don't have any duplicate content issues until a 301 redirect can take over when the new site is fully launched.

        However, depending on your rollout schedule, this would mean that the SERPs would soon be indexing only the new pages. You'd need to ensure that the traffic diverter you are using would handle this. Otherwise you could put the rel=canonical on the new pages for now, which would avoid the duplicate content until you are fully launched. Then you'd remove it and 301 redirect the old pages to the new.

        Just something you maybe want to think about! Hopefully your traffic diverter can handle this though. 🙂

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • STPseo
          STPseo @STPseo last edited by Mar 1, 2011, 8:04 PM Mar 1, 2011, 8:04 PM

          Thank you very much for the insight!

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • FrankWickers
            FrankWickers @STPseo last edited by Mar 1, 2011, 8:02 PM Mar 1, 2011, 8:02 PM

            Ah ok. I understand now. I wasn't picking up on what you were saying before.

            If with the soft launch you are already putting the "new" version of the site on their intended final URLs then yes, you can let the engines start crawling those URLs. For each new URL you let the search engines crawl make sure to 301 its corresponding old URL (the old site) to the new version to minimize any duplicate content issues.

            If for whatever reason you can't quite 301 the old URLs yet (like if you still need instant access to reroute traffic back to them) you could try using rel=canonical on the old pages and point them to their new counter part only if the main content on each of the pages is almost exactly the same. You don't want Google to think you're manipulating them with rel=canonical.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • STPseo
              STPseo @STPseo last edited by Mar 1, 2011, 7:54 PM Mar 1, 2011, 7:54 PM

              Sorry this is so confusing and thank you so much for your responses... there would be no subdomain when we do the soft launch... it would be http://www.sierratradingpost.com/Mens-Clothing.html (old site) vs http://www.sierratradingpost.com/mens-clothing~d~15/ (new site)...

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • FrankWickers
                FrankWickers @STPseo last edited by Mar 1, 2011, 7:49 PM Mar 1, 2011, 7:49 PM

                As I'd said, there really isn't a reason to let them get a head start. The URL's will be changing when you transition the new site out of the subdomain (ie beta.sierratradingpost.com/mens vs sierratradingpost.com/mens - those are considered 2 completely different URLs) and the engines will have to recrawl all of the new pages at that point anyway.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • STPseo
                  STPseo @STPseo last edited by Mar 1, 2011, 7:39 PM Mar 1, 2011, 7:39 PM

                  We do plan to do that... it is just since we plan a soft launch we will essentially have 2 sites out there. We are wondering when to remove the noindex from the new site. We will have 2 sites for about a month... should we let the bots crawl the new site (new urls, same domain) only we we take down the old site and have the 301's or let Google crawl earlier to get the new site a head start on indexing.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • FrankWickers
                    FrankWickers @STPseo last edited by Mar 1, 2011, 7:35 PM Mar 1, 2011, 7:35 PM

                    And when you drop the sub domain you definitely want to 301 all of the old site structure's  URLs to their corresponding new page's URLs. That way nothing gets lost in the transition.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • STPseo
                      STPseo @STPseo last edited by Mar 1, 2011, 7:28 PM Mar 1, 2011, 7:28 PM

                      We would drop the subdomain - so we would have 2 "Men's Clothing" department pages - different URLs, slightly different content...

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • FrankWickers
                        FrankWickers @STPseo last edited by Mar 1, 2011, 7:25 PM Mar 1, 2011, 7:25 PM

                        Yeah, just refer to our conversation above as I think it will pertain better to your situation.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • FrankWickers
                          FrankWickers @STPseo last edited by Mar 1, 2011, 7:24 PM Mar 1, 2011, 7:24 PM

                          The only issue is that you have to keep in mind that Google/Bing defines pages on the internet through their URL's, not the content. The content only describes the pages.

                          So if you let the engines pre crawl the pages before dropping the subdomain - simply for the reason of letting them have a "sneak peek" - you won't really be doing yourself much of a favor, as the engines will just be recrawling the content on the non subdomain URL as if it were brand new anyway.

                          The reason to do it the pre crawl way would be if you're already building back links to the new beta pages. Then it could make sense to let the engines index those pages and 301 them to their new non subdomain versions later. In my opinion the benefit from this route would outweigh any potential duplicate content issues.

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                          • STPseo
                            STPseo @STPseo last edited by Mar 1, 2011, 7:10 PM Mar 1, 2011, 7:10 PM

                            But the URL structer is different... does that matter?

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • FrankWickers
                              FrankWickers @STPseo last edited by Mar 1, 2011, 7:09 PM Mar 1, 2011, 7:09 PM

                              What YesBaby is talking about is somehting like Google's Website Optimizer. When someone goes to sierratradingpost.com/mens-stuff, for example, it will give 50% of the people the old version of the site for that page, and the other 50% the new version. It will eliminate any duplicate content issues as the 2 page variations will still be attached to the same exact URL.

                              Definitely a viable option if it fits with your game plan of how you want to do things.

                              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • STPseo
                                STPseo @STPseo last edited by Mar 1, 2011, 7:09 PM Mar 1, 2011, 7:09 PM

                                SInce all of the URLs except for the homepage - what do you think about letting the new site get crawled maybe 2 weeks before it is 100% launched? We would have some duplicate content issues but I am hoping this would give us a head start with the new site.... then when we go 100% we add the 301's and new sitemap. It is my understanding we will be dropping the sub domain for the soft launch.

                                Thank you so much!

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • FrankWickers
                                  FrankWickers @STPseo last edited by Mar 1, 2011, 11:01 PM Mar 1, 2011, 7:05 PM

                                  First of all - I love the new design. It looks great!

                                  The absolutel best way to go about it in my opinion would be to simply have the new site ready, and then launch it fully under the base domain (no subdomain) while 301 redirecting important old pages on the site to their related new versions. That way the search engine will have the easiest time of discovering the new site and indexing it, while making sure you don't lose anything in the transition via proper 301'ing.

                                  I can't say it would provide you with a massive benefit to set up a way for the search engines to start crawling the new site for now, as you're just going to be moving all of those URL's off of the subdomain in the near future anyway - where they will then need to be recrawled on the parent domain as if they were brand new.

                                  If the traffic diverter you have set up automatically 301's requests for old site pages to their new beta URL version then you might as well let those new versions be indexed for the time being. Just make sure that when you transfer the beta site to the parent domain that you 301 the old beta URL's to their new permanent home.

                                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                  • STPseo
                                    STPseo @YesBaby last edited by Mar 1, 2011, 7:02 PM Mar 1, 2011, 7:02 PM

                                    So with the service - the new site is not crawled until we launch it?

                                    FrankWickers STPseo 3 Replies Last reply Mar 1, 2011, 7:25 PM Reply Quote 0
                                    • STPseo
                                      STPseo @FrankWickers last edited by Mar 1, 2011, 6:37 PM Mar 1, 2011, 6:37 PM

                                      The new site is beta.sierratradingpost.com where we will be dropping the beta. On the old one has catalog departments... ie Men's Classics, which, at this time, are not being carried over to the new site. I guess we are wonding when we should allow the robots to crawl the new site?

                                      FrankWickers STPseo Tom-Anthony 11 Replies Last reply Mar 3, 2011, 8:19 PM Reply Quote 0
                                      • YesBaby
                                        YesBaby last edited by Mar 1, 2011, 6:35 PM Mar 1, 2011, 6:35 PM

                                        Hey Stephan,

                                        I'm assuming you want to measure how the traffic is converting on the new site, hence the strategy to send small portions of traffic to new pages?

                                        If so, the easiest way might to just straight up A/B split test the new pages with a service like Adobe/Omniture Test&Target. This doesn't cause any cloaking/dupe isseues. When you are happy with the results you can realese the site with all the 301's in place.

                                        STPseo 1 Reply Last reply Mar 1, 2011, 7:02 PM Reply Quote 0
                                        • FrankWickers
                                          FrankWickers last edited by Mar 1, 2011, 6:34 PM Mar 1, 2011, 6:33 PM

                                          Let me make sure I have this straight... you're not going to be directing the new site format to a subdomain permanently, right? You were only using the sub domain for beta purposes?

                                          The way I see it, when I go to Sierra Trading Post's site now I can make out what looks like 2 different types of architecture structures. You have one link on the page pointing to Men's clothing which executes at a single defined .htm file. Then you can see that you have the "Men's Classics" (still general men's clothing?) which points to a directory which I'm guessing is your new site. Correct me if I'm wrong on this, or if I'm right but have the old vs. new reversed.

                                          If that is the case your best bet to try and minimalize any ranking impact would be to 301 redirect pages from the old catalog architecture to the new. That way you could remove the old site files completely and let the server take care of the direction.

                                          If you need to leave the old site up for throttling purposes like you said - you could use canoniclazation tags to refer the old pages to the new ones. That along with employing 301 tags would help train the search engines into understanding what you're doing.

                                          I'm sorry if I didn't answer your question as you needed. I'm still not sure if I understood your issue as intended. =P

                                          STPseo 1 Reply Last reply Mar 1, 2011, 6:37 PM Reply Quote 1
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