How to retain link juice moving to new site, cms and servers?
-
We have been hosting our website with a provider (their design and CMS) and we are now moving to a new design, better content focussing on keywords in a different CMS platform on different servers but want to retain the link juice from the old site.
We have used Open Site Explorer Report to determine all the links to the old site and the pages they link to.
What is the best strategy to keep the link juice flowing to the new site?
Example
This site <http: www.dogslifedownunder.com="" what-is-worse-then-going-to-the-v-e-t="">links to this page <http: 19105="" www.sydneyanimalhospitals.com.au="" ourstaff="" thevets="" tabid="" default.aspx="">on the old site.</http:></http:>
We will have a similar page on the new site with the same staff members called for example:
How do we ensure that the we retain the link juice?
Any thoughts most welcome.
-
Pleasure buddy, hope it helps!
-
Thanks Marcus. Appreciate your input and suggestions. Most helpful.
-
Hey, the basic answer here is with HTTP 301 redirections from the original pages to the new page.
Rather than just knowing the cryptic name it helps to understand what is going on behind the scenes a little and why this works. When a page is requested on your site the web server returns a HTTP status code. For a standard page request this is 200 OK and for missing pages a 400 Page Not Found response is returned. There are many other responses but the one we are interested in is for indicating a permanent redirection from the resource on Site A to a resource on Site B and this is a 301 Permanent Redirection.
This provides a range of benefits for users and the search engines
- a user visiting the old site from a search engine result listing is transported to the new resource
- a search engine visiting the link is informed that this resource has moved to a new location and the new page is given
- the page rank and value from any inbound links is forwarded to the new page (not all but most)
So, in this case the 301 redirect provides a complete solution to your problem. It updates and redirects users without requiring anything from them and it allows the search engine to update their records and start concentrating on your new site.
Note
There are a few things to take into consideration here to make sure this works well
- You need to manually redirect page A to page B so there maybe a fair bit of work involved for a larger site
- The redirections may need to be in place for a good while and if you generate a lot of direct traffic - keep an eye on the indexation and web logs for the old site to decide when you can kill it dead
Ultimately, you want the old site to remain in place, redirecting requests until it no longer receives any traffic (or such a low level that it is practical to remove it). If you do get a lot of direct traffic, be sure to update people so they can update their records.
Approach
Which brings us to the technology and approach required. I see you are using .Net aspx pages which is not really my bag but I can give you an overview of the options. You also seem to have wildly different page rules so a cute solution that just dynamically changes the domain but keeps the page the same is not going to work here (sorry).
- Page Level Redirects: add code to the individual pages to redirect to the new page
- Add redirection rules to the global.asax config file
- Create rewrites in the IIS GUI
Beyond the rewrites
An oft overlooked strategy with 301's is to get them done and then really concentrate on the new site. Start building links, try to repoint some of your high quality older links to the new site and start building and promoting new content to get some really high quality links to the new site. All of these strategies will bolster the new site and help it replace the old site as quickly as possible.
Summary
If you have a big site, manually rewriting all the URL's to the their counterparts on the new site is going to be a bit of a job but one that is worth doing. If you want to prioritise the job look at your most popular pages in your analytics and this gives you a plan of attack. Once you have created specific rules for this you can create a catch all rule to redirect all remaining pages to the sites homepage.
That, pretty much covers it. If we have a windows server / IIS / asp.net guru here who can dive in and fill you in on the specifics of the actual syntax and approach then you should be good to go.
Shout if you have any questions.
Marcus
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
-
Does adding more outgoing links on a high PA page decrease the juice passed to previous links?
Hi, I'm not sure how PA DA exactly works when the goal is to create backlinks to your site in order to have the most impact on passing PA DA juice (if there is such a thing) to ones money site. For example let's say you have a blog and the PA is 40 DA is 30. Let's say I create a backlink pointing to my site on the homepage of this blog, in which I desire better rankings for, and the links I created are only 1-3 outgoing links on this post which is again on the homepage. Then say in a months time, I want to add another post on the homepage (so the 40 PA and 30 DA stays the same) creating a backlink to one of my other money sites. Does adding this second round of backlinks result in sending less juice to the first? This is what I want to know. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | z8YX9F800 -
Moving a lot of pdfs to main site. Worth trying to get them indexed?
On my main site we link to pdfs that are located on another one of our domains. The only thing that is on this other domain is the pdfs. It was setup really poorly so I am going to redesign everything and probably move it. Is it worthwhile trying to add these pdfs to our sitemap and to try and get them indexed? They are all connected to a current item, but the content is original.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
How do I get more video reviews on a new site?
Hi, I'm working on a site that has video reviews of various places. It's general information/experience that most people possess and production-wise they are selfies. These videos are then transcribed and, voila... searchable content. My problem is this... how do I get large numbers of people to go to the trouble to make a 2 minute selfie? I thought about HARO, since one could work in a plug for something, but they have a site traffic threshold that this new site isn't at. Any and all ideas on how to efficiently generate this content for a new site with very little traffic would be appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Our site is on a secure server (https) will a link to http:// be of less value?
Our site is hosted on a secure network (I.E. Our web address is - https://www.workbooks.com). Will a backlink pointing to: http://www.workbooks.com provide less value than a link pointing to: https://www.workbooks.com ? Many thanks, Sam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sam.at.Moz0 -
New site, new URL, lots of custom content. Load it all or "trickle" it over time?
New site, new URL, lots of custom content. Load it all or "trickle" it over time? Would it make a difference in terms of ranking the site? Interested in your thoughts. Thanks! BBuck!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BBuck0 -
.GOV Link - same impact on my site's rankings whether link to home or Gov related category?
I own a job site and I am about to get a link from a .GOV. My site has a category called "State Jobs". Should I ask the ".Gov" to link to my homepage or to the state job page and use the anchor text "State Jobs". I understand "State Jobs" page would get a big kick by that being the anchor text and linking to that specific page, but the question I have is this: for my site as a whole (homepage and various categories) would they get around the same "push up" whether the linking is to 1) my homepage with anchor text being my site's name or 2) to the state job specific page and in this case the anchor text would be "State Jobs"? thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen0 -
Launching a new site with old, new and updated content: What’s best practice?
Hi all, We are launching a new site soon and I’d like your opinion on best practice related to its content. We will be retaining some pages and content (although the URLs might change a bit as I intend to replace under-scores with hyphens and remove .asp from some extensions in order to standardise a currently uneven URL structuring). I will also be adding a lot of new pages with new content, along with amend some pages and their content (and amend URLs again if need be), and a few pages are going to be done away with all together. Any advice from those who’ve done the same in the past as to how best to proceed? Does the URL rewriting sound OK to do in conjunction with adding and amending content? Cheers, Dave
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Martin_S0 -
Does google detect all updated page with new links
as paid links? Example: A PR 4 page updates the page a year later with new links. Does Google discredit these links as being fishy?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | imageworks-2612900