Redirect Help - Domain Change and Website Redesign
-
Hi there,
I've redesigned a website for a client, but we are also changing domains and I'm trying to figure out the best way to set up the redirects from their old domain to the new one.
95% of their search engine traffic originally came through brand related keywords that landed on their homepage, and most of the remaining 15% landed on 3 other pages.
The new site has pages to replace these 3 main SEO pages, and I'm about to set 301 redirects from their old domain, but I can't figure out the quickest/best way to do it.
Is it possible to set up a specific redirect for the 4 main pages (Home + plus the 3 others) then a "catch all" type of thing for the rest of the pages, that redirect either to the homepage, or some sort of "Check out our new Site" landing page.
How do you do this, or is there a better way to set it up?
Thanks!
-
Tim
The essential pages to redirect are;
- Ones that have backlinks pointing to them (check in opensite explorer, majestic seo, google webmaster tools, and analytics for referring sites
- Carry ranking value for specific keywords that are valuable to you
- Have ever been a landing page (look at your landing page report in analytics for the past 6-12 months) - although it seems like you've got this figured out. Is it a fairly small site? (Under 50 pages or something?)
Depending on how your site is built there are several options for doing the redirects in an efficient way. Assuming it's a custom site and you've got a good clean URL structure, I might try something like;
- Spider both sites with Screaming Frog
- Export the URLs into Excel
- Do some sort of lookup function to match the corresponding URLs from the old site to the new site
- Use that to construct the text for the .htaccess file.
If the site is so small, you might not need something intense like that. Cut and paste will do just fine
If some other setup, I'd need to know more to suggest a different way to create your redirects.
After you do everything, check webmaster tools for the next few weeks for any 404s that might pop up.
Hope that helps.
-Dan
-
Hi Tim, if you haven't already, check out http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection which gives you some basics and then there are some good links in the answers to this question http://www.seomoz.org/q/htaccess-issue which explain how to get redirects working.
The other thing to consider is: were any of the old pages actually getting traffic? If not, it may not be worth your while to redirect them.
If you've only got three pages, just use something like:
redirect 301 /blah.htm http://www.newdomain/newblah.php
and so on.
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
-
Hold Off on SEO Changes After Domain Migration?
We migrated our domain on April 4th. Our domain authority has dropped from 22 to 8. Traffic is down from 90 visits a day to 10. Search console has indexed about 120 out of 600 pages. I have been told it may take several months to recovers some element of domain authority. My SEO consultant has planned on implementing the following changes immediately: 1. Change in URL structure
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
2. Build internal links (my site has very few).
3. Optimize URLs for specific keywords
4. Keyword optimization of URLs using Yoast.
5. Modify Schema Do we risk confusing Google further by making these changes until are domain authority and traffic has recovered? Is it safe to proceed with some "softer" changes such building internal links and keyword optimizing text whicl avoiding more disruptive changes such as re-writing URLs? Are we better off focusing on off site ranking factors such as link building and local SEO until domain authority recovers? How about only adding new content to the site such as blog posts and listings? To complicate matters the site is old and dated and we are working on a new UX design. So perhaps it would be better to launch the new UX at the exact same time as the onsite SEO optimization occurs. This could be less work and less disruptive. At the same time I would very much like to enjoy benefits of optimizing SEO now. Any thoughts????? Also, my domain migration has killed traffic. It is very concerning!! Is a 90% drop in traffic normal in the first ten days!? Thanks everyone!!!
Alan1 -
Domain authority a better metric then referring domain count?
Hi Guys, When reviewing competitors what would be a better metric - Referring domain count OR domain authority. From my understanding DA is a indication of the quality of the link profile. So if a site has a high DA this is a better metric for comparison then referring domain count. What are your thoughts on this? Cheers/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cathywix0 -
Domains and Domain Authority
Looking for some advice 🙂 I have a domain that has been registered since 1999 and currently hosts my website - the problem is that my business has moved in a different direction and my URL is no longer associated with my main product offering. For example in the past I was xyzgarden.com however now something like xyzhomedecor.com is much more appropriate. How should I handle this so that I am not at a disadvantage for SEO. thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MainstreamMktg0 -
Domain Redirect and SSL Cert
Hi, When redirecting an entire site to another domain, do you have to maintain the SSL certificate? The SSL expires 3 days before the planned redirect. Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sofla_seo0 -
What happens to a domain in SERPs when it's set to redirect to another?
We have just acquired a competing website and are wondering whether to leave it running as is for now, or set the domain to redirect to our own site. If we set up this redirect, what would happen to the old site in Google SERPs? Would the site drop off from results? If so, would we capture this new search traffic or is it a free for all and all sites compete for the search traffic as normal? Thanks in advance. Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kevinliao0 -
Parked Vs Addon/Redirect Domain
We have an old site we are trying to figure out what to do with it. Right now, we have it as a parked domain, but were considering changing it to an addon domain with a redirect. I have no reason why I chose parked vs addon, other than I had to pick one. Is one superior than the other? What are the pro's and con's for these? Thanks, Ruben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Should I Roll Back Domain Change?
A couple years ago I changed domain names and switched platforms for my site. The traffic dropped dramatically (80-90%). I've tried to get inbound links changed, clean up on-page stuff, but nothing is making a big change. I think most of the problem is loss of link juice with the 301 redirects from the old domain to the new one. Would I be risking bigger losses by switching back to the old domain name?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iJeep0 -
Multiple Domain names pointing at one website
Hello, A collegue has asked if we can buy multiple domain names which contain keywords and point them at our website. Is this good practise or will it be seen as spam? Will these domains actually get ranked? I'm sure I'm not the first person to raise this but can't seem to find any questions and answers about this. Thanks Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | markc-1971830