Changing Site Structure Drastically
-
Howdy Guys, We are in the process of changing our sites structure dramatically, at the moment this is how an internal page / URL reads: Www.mydomainname.co.uk/ww.sys/pagename We will he changing our site over to wordpress very shortly and will have the correct permalinks in place. We are scared it's going to hurt our rankings as we are in the top 6 for a highly competitive keyword at the moment - the bouns is our domain name is 11yrs old and we have a PR of 4. We have setup all the 301s in web.configuration file just wondering if any of you have made a dramatic change like this and been dropped off the rankings.....
-
Update them.
Ideally every URLs on the planet that pointed to the old URLs will now point to the new URLs.
-
Hi Ryan, Thank for the reply. The internal links shouldmi just leave them as the OLD urs or update them?
-
When moving a site to a new structure, if you properly 301 all your pages and update your internal links you should retain most of your rankings once the move is completely settled. Your rankings may bounce around a bit as Google does not index your site all at once, but rather captures a bit with each crawl. It often takes several weeks for a site to be fully crawled.
Once your site is fully crawled you may lose a minor amount of ranking due to the loss of linking power from the 301 redirects. I would advise updating all the links possible to reflect the new URLs. Any links to your site that you control in signatures, facebook, etc. should be updated.
Some people have made this change and everything went very smoothly. Others had a rougher transition which was usually due to not properly 301'ing all the pages or updating their links.
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
-
How does Google treat significant content changes to web pages and how should I flag them as such?
I have several pages (~30) that I have plans to overhaul. The URLs will be identical and the theme of the content will be the same (still talking about the same widgets, using the same language) but I will be adding a lot more useful information for users, specifically including things that I think will help with my fairly high bounce rate on these pages. I believe the changes will be significant enough for Google to notice, I was wondering if it goes "this is basically a new page now, I will treat it as such and rank accordingly" or does it go "well this content was rubbish last time I checked so it is probably still not great". My second question is, is there a way I can get Google to specifically crawl a page it already knows about with fresh eyes? I know in the Search Console I can ask Google to index new pages, and I've experimented with if I can ask it to crawl a page I know Google knows (it allows me to) but I couldn't see any evidence of it doing anything with that index. Some background The reason I'm doing this is because I noticed when these pages first ranked, they did very well (almost all first / second page for the terms I wanted). After about two weeks I've noticed them sliding down. It doesn't look like the competition is getting any better so my running theory is they ranked well to begin with because they are well linked internally and the content is good/relevant and one of the main things negatively impacting me (that google couldn't know at the time) is bounce rate.
Search Behavior | | tosbourn0 -
Google smacked my site and dropped all rankings, can't find out why
I have checked out everything, I mean everything. We have no dupe content, our content is a little thin, but it is ours and accurate enough to help our customers.We follow all SEO guidelines and make sure we de-index any pages with no / little content (like privacy, or faq) All in all, we haven't done any major updates to the sites, and everything was great (page one on almost all kw) but beginning of the month, all kw wiped to the second page, than third, than back to one and now pretty much gone (rank 100-200) I really don't know what to do. We didn't receive a manual action, and the last algo update was nothing big to cause such a drastic change. Meanwhile our competition (multiple sites) are gaining in ranks and nothing happened to them (most of them have even less content and not even SSL) Negative SEO is out of question, I check all links via ahrefs every other day. Any help is appreciated Thanks
Search Behavior | | s-s0 -
Time Spend on Site from Smartphone vs Desktop
On a website with a well optimized website for smartphones, how long time should one expect the average user spends on the website - from their smartphone - as a % of the time users spends from a desktop.
Search Behavior | | khi5
Example: if average user spends 10min on the site from a desktop, is 5min (50% of..) a decent number to expect? If anyone has any done any studies or have data on this, would be appreciated. thank you0 -
GWMT - "Tag Site For Child Directed Treatment" Effect On Search / Rankings?
Hi All, We have a client who has been directed to tag their site for "Child Directed Treatment" in Webmaster tools to comply with AdExchange policies. The site is, generally speaking, directed at those between the ages of 13 and 16 along with their parents, but does NOT collect any data (No sign in, login, signups etc). You can find out more about the specific tag here (unfortunately not much more about it) https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/3221080?hl=en Our concern is that we have never heard of this specific tag, and our client is asking us to let them know if that this will have no effect on search traffic or ranking. I can't find much in the way of anyone who HAS implemented this tag and the effects it has had on their site. They are ad supported, receive millions of unique hits a month, and the majority of their traffic is from branded keywords. Would love to hear from anyone with ANY experience or thoughts on this process and what to be aware of. Your assistance is muchly appreciated.
Search Behavior | | SearchMarketers0 -
How come some local 7 pack listings link to site and some link to the G+ page?
Does anyone know how to fix this issue? Even though a site profile has had the website added to it Google continues to link the main "title tag" link to the G+ page and not the actual website domain. Thanks for any info in advance! https://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-ab&q=dog+sitting+in+rockaway&oq=dog+sitting+in+rockaway&gs_l=hp.3..0i22i30l4.14871.16189.1.16397.8.8.0.0.0.0.296.2042.2-7.7.0...0.0...1c.1.15.psy-ab.Y1db0jo77V0&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.47244034,d.bmk&fp=722b460c2153b7be&biw=1920&bih=910
Search Behavior | | irvingw0 -
Micro Location Site with EMD , Property related
Hi I have a client, who focus is on Commercial property leasing in Johannesburg and surrounding area's. We find that people search for "area"& "property type" The client bought 50 exact match domains for keywords that we currently run in Google Adwords for example:We advertise on keywords: "Midrand offices to let" and bought Midrandofficestolet.com, now the group wants to make small micro sites with unique article about commercial property in that area "Midrand" with a link to the main site where the "midrand properties" are listed . The feeder or micro sites will also have contact details of main site. the domains will all be hosted on the same server, registered to the same owner est. Is this typical link farming? or should we rather build the articles on the main website and park the domains on the area categories? The clients main-set is that he will same money on adwords by owning the EMD and from that link to his main site Your guidance will be much appriciated
Search Behavior | | Zooka0 -
Meta description of homepage, changing to latest post
Here's something strange I noticed. The meta description for Engadget when doing a Google search is their latest blog entry. However, if you land on the homepage and view source the page, the meta description is a standard one for their homepage. My first impressions : Wha? How? and Wha? Could it be because it is a "news" site, Google goes "go on, have custom meta descriptions of your latest entry.." Thoughts?
Search Behavior | | Bio-RadAbs0