Safest way to launch a redesign
-
Hey MozFolk,
I was wondering what the best and SAFEST way to handle this situation is; I am doing a redesign of our current website, but the new site will have different content. Should we just forward the entire root domain in the HT Access file? Or redirect each and every URL using a 301? I know these, terms but never actually done it myself, and cannot risk losing the SEO weight of this website.
How do I handle a group of pages that they don't want to continue to use also? Do I just leave those URLs be, or do I forward all of them to one new page (or homepage) on the new site?
Please help me look like a rockstar and save the ship from sinking itself!
-
Hey thanks, the site is less than 30 pages. But would it be just as acceptable to just forward the entire domain, or is it better practice to 301 each individual page. And if I do 301 each page, do we ALSO need to forward the domain?
I appreciate your help!
Derek
-
It can be a pretty big job if you change the URL structures - depending on how large the website is.
Modesto Siotos wrote a blog on it here.
If you change the structure then ideally, you should forward every page to the closest replacement page on the new design using a 301.
Give the blog a good read, it should hopefully help.
Matt
-
How big is the site? It would be ideal to either keep the existing site structure so you don't need to worry about redirecting pages OR 301 as many pages as possible to the new URLs for those pages. If you have any pages on the current site that won't have a counterpart on the new site, then I recommend 301ing as many of those pages to the most relevant page on the new site as possible.
Of course, if your site is thousands or millions of pages large, then it's likely not feasible to manually go in and redirect every single page so I'd recommend at least redirecting the most popular pages to their new counterparts and then possibly redirect all of the remaining pages to the most relevant mid-level pages or even the homepage.
The last thing you want to do is simply redirect all of the pages to the root domain...
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
-
Site Redesign Performance
Hi, I am looking for a bit of advice if possible. In October 2018 we did a site redesign for a website that we had acquired (www.drainageonline.co.uk) but we have lost SO much organic traffic since Oct (-40/50% each month). I have amended any crawl errors including broken redirects ensuring all 301's that we put in place are working correctly, ensured 404 pages working OK, implemented canonical onto all pages along with other bits but we don't really seem to be seeing any improvements in our organic traffic. Can anyone offer any advice on the above? Thanks, Lea
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GAP_Digital_Marketing0 -
Only homepage is ranking after site re-launch
We've been moving all our sites over to a new platform (Demandware) this year. In the process, they've all gotten updated designs (from the same template), on-page optimizations, etc. Since they're all on the same platform and are essentially copies from one template, any technical issues found have been fixed across all sites. The problem I'm seeing is there are a few sites that haven't really seen much/any recovery from the site launch, and these are sites that were done 4-5 months ago. There's one in particular that's especially concerning, since it's showing issues that none of the other sites seem to have. In my Moz reports, it looks like of all the keywords that are ranking, they're only ranking the https version of the homepage (and from what I'm seeing, the https version wasn't picked up and ranked until the beginning of October, which was also the time that WMT shows a huge drop in clicks and impressions). I've crawled the site (ScreamingFrog), done a site search in Google (all pages look to be indexed), etc. and I haven't come across any specific problems there that would suggest a technical issue. We're wondering if it might be a link authority problem, since this site had the most dramatic change in navigation. The navigation used to be product based (Boots, Shoes, etc.) and is now broken up by gender. I've noticed that a few other pages that are ranking are dual gender pages that also existed on the old site, whereas all of these new categories aren't ranking at all and I'm not seeing this happen with any of our other sites. I've gone down a bunch of different paths trying to figure this out, but I haven't come up with any concrete answers as to why this is happening and how to fix it. Any thoughts as to what else I can look into or try for this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WWWSEO0 -
What are the best practices with website redesign & redirects?
I have a website that is not very pretty but has great rankings. I want to redesign the website and loose as little rankings as possible and still clean up the navigation. What are the best practices? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JHSpecialty0 -
Best way to duplicate a wordpress site for staging purposes?
I want to make some changes to my Wordpress site, and want to somehow set up a live staging area. Does anyone know of a good way to do this? I want all of the same content there I just want to be able to make changes to it and try it all out before going live. Any thoughts on this? Also I want to be sure the staging site doesn't get indexed since it will be a complete duplicate of my existing site. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NoahsDad0 -
Best way to get the keyword ranking at the top
I am working on site for around six months now.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ray2810
I have done social bookmarking submission, directory submission, blog comments, forum submissions etc. Is there anything else i can do to make the rank go higher. nothing is working correctly.0 -
Don't want to lose page rank, what's the best way to restructure a url other than a 301 redirect?
Currently in the process of redesigning a site. What i want to know, is what is the best way for me to restructure the url w/out it losing its value (page rank) other than a 301 redirect?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marig0 -
Whats the best way to handle product microformats such as hproduct, goodrelations on ecommerce for Google?
With web3.0 results with microfrmatting showing in google, yahoo etc through reviews, instock, events, sales, pricing etc.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RampUpInteractive0 -
Has anyone found a way to get site links in the SERPs?
I am wanting to get some site links in the serps to increase the size of my "space", has anyone found a way of getting them? I know google says that its automatic and only generated if they feel it would benifit browsers but there must be a rule of thumb to follow. I was thinking down the line of a tight catagorical system that is implimented throughout the site that is clearly related to the content (how it should be I guess)... Any comments, suggestions welcome
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CraigAddyman0