How to keep old URL Juice During Site Switch
-
I am switching a local businesses website to a new template. The url structure will be different. What is the best way to not loose the old urls and what content should I serve on them?
For example:
The url oldwebsite.com/product-a will no longer exist when I switch to the new template. I dont want to loose the current page rank and associate seo juice. At the same time, I do not have the resources to remap every page to the correct new page. My initial thoughts are to just display the homepage content on all of the old urls. Is this a good practice?
-
Hi Michael,
Thanks man that means a lot!
All the best,
Thomas
-
PS this will help too
If you buy http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
This free guide from Seer Interactive is better than the one that comes with it
Screaming Frog Guide to Doing Almost Anything: 55+ Ways of Looking at a Tool
http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/screaming-frog-guide
as Jeff stated Microsoft Excel can be one of the best tools in the world for you right now here's some info/Tools
http://www.distilled.net/excel-for-seo/
http://seogadget.com/tools/link-categorisation-tool-for-excel/
http://seogadget.com/tools/anchor-text-tool/
http://www.johnfdoherty.com/three-phenomenal-excel-spreadsheets-for-link-analysis/
http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/awesome-examples-of-how-to-use-seotools-for-excel/
-
I know this is not a domain migration however it should be treated almost exactly like one
I can if you change tell you from personal experience on quite a few jobs the link structure of a website Google long with redesigning it meaning put it on a CMS like WordPress not that WordPress is that I love it however the links are knocking to be the same. Meaning let's say you had 40 links on example.com/example.php now you will have a URL example.com/example/ or example.com/keyword-example/ only if appropriate
now you have a new website that are looking, more user-friendly, the URLs are easy to understand because of the way the written. You would think I should be better ranking.
Unfortunately the gods that Google will not allow that every time. If you do not map the 301 redirects correctly your site will lose an immense amount of traffic in fact I would say don't make the change and less you can take the time to create new 301 redirects. That point to whatever the new version of that pages is and it must be done correctly with the right amount of time.
Make sure to tell Google that you're making a change
thumbs up to Jeff He has told you exactly the way you should conduct the 301 redirects and how important they are.
Please read the URLs below as well.
What Robert says in this link is right on the money and the URLs below are regarding the SEOmoz.org to Moz.com transition while I understand that's not a cheap or quick transition it does have a very effective method for not losing value when making changes like you are doing.
Please read these 3 links
http://moz.com/community/q/changing-domains-how-much-link-juice-is-lost-with-301-redirect
http://moz.com/blog/domain-migration-lessons
Although Robert does post this URL I think it should be posted again it's about telling Google what you're doing ahead of time
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83106?hl=en
http://moz.com/blog/achieving-an-seo-friendly-domain-migration-the-infographic
if don't know the photograph I attached is big enough however here is a link to it that is large enough and I will link to the author is Aleyda Solis it is her page to give credit where it's due.
this is full-size info-graph about what will affect the domain during a immigration
http://www.aleydasolis.com/images/seo-website-domain-migration.gif
You said You are doing this for local SEO the same woman who made the photo in the link above Aleyda Solis a local SCO expert these are some other things you should be concentrating on
http://www.aleydasolis.com/seo-local-google-places/
You will want to do a complete audit of your website before you move so you're not losing links. That means to me at least using majesticSEO, aRefs & Moz OSE
I love Moz however if you want to utilize all 3 of those tools and you're on a budget you might want to try Raven's tools & SERPS free 30 day trial out it allows you information from all 3 sources. Though I do prefer Moz
once you have done this use a free tool for up to 500 pages http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/
this will audit allow for you to make 301 redirects and map your site if you pay for the Pro version which is about €100. Well worth the money though.
Last but not least. When you make this transition you are going to need to possibly change from Apache to Nginx I'm basing this on Nginx being close to the 2nd most popular Web server in the world right now. Here are two tools that will you to drop in your Apache code and convert it to Nginx code you take what was in the .htaccess file and dropped the converted code into the Nginx config file all of these tools are excellent however the 1st one is probably the most proven that and the 3rd one lets you see both code changes made simultaneously So you can and right in Apache and watch it come out and Nginx in real time all 3 work your choice.
I hope this helps and I think everyone here has put some good information About this in here.
Best of luck to,
Thomas
-
I agree with Federico. If you don't do 301 redirects for the older pages --> mapped to the new pages, the site's rankings will likely drop like a stone. Especially if you have inbound links pointing to those older pages. Google will figure out from the new site structure what pages should be indexed. But best practice is to map the older pages to the new ones.
Depending on the site, you should be able to automate some of this, and plug it into an excel spreadsheet to come up with the 301 redirects for the .htaccess file.
If for example, the older URLs are all like: http://www.domain.com/about-us.html and the new site is http://www.domain.com/about-us/ then it's easy to create this rule and apply it more systematically (using a programmatic rule in the .htaccess file), or just plug all of the pages into a spreadsheet and have this apply:
Redirect 301 about-us.html http://www.domain.com/about-us/
You are now much later in the game, but when we are working on a new site layout that changes the URL structure, we will often map this out (page by page) early on, so that we don't miss any of the older pages on the site. And in some cases, we've made a lot of effort to keep the existing site structure, as older pages that have ranked well for 10+ years might be better left alone, without a name change.
That's my $0.02, though… I think that 301 redirects are often overlooked in the website design budget, but if you want to make sure that your client is happy 3-4 weeks from now and refers more business to you, this is a must-do item, in my professional opinion. That said, it's not fun to go over budget on a project
-
Hi,
As Fedrico mentioned the best and perhaps the only right way to do it is to redirect all old pages to corresponding new pages.
However please make sure you do a 301 redirect.
I understand that you may have time limitations owing to which you not want to redirect each url to corresponding page but if you could share some technical information about your website, I can help you speed up the process by providing dynamic 301 redirect codes which can take care of a lot of manual work on your part.
Please share the following information on my private message:
1. Website URL/s (new if its already live and old too)
2. Do you use a CMS system? If yes please mention if it's wordpress / Joomla or any other?
Thanks & Regards,
Prateek Chandra
-
I believe not. That won't be a good solution.
The best one I can suggest is you DO redirect all the old pages to the new version of them (if any) and the other ones, the ones that have no new match you should return a customized 404 perhaps with links to related pages you can have within the new design.
It will take time, yes. But that's the way to keep the most of your search traffic and pagerank.
Hope that helps.
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
-
Google selecting incorrect URL as canonical: 'Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical'
Hi there, A number of our URLs are being de-indexed by Google. When looking into this using Google Search Console the same message is appearing on multiple pages across our sites: 'Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical' 'IndexingIndexing allowed? YesUser-declared canonical - https://www.mrisoftware.com/ie/products/real-estate-financial-software/Google-selected canonical - https://www.mrisoftware.com/uk/products/real-estate-financial-software/'Has anyone else experienced this problem?How can I get Google to select the correct, user-declared canoncial? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | nfrank0 -
Why are these blackhat sites so successful?
Here's an interesting conundrum. Here are three sites with their respective ranking for "dental implants [city]:" http://dentalimplantsvaughan.ca - 9 (on google.ca) http://dentalimplantsinhonoluluhi.com - 2 (on google.com) http://dentalimplantssurreybc.ca - 7 (on google.ca) These markets are not particularly competitive, however, all of these sites suffer from: Duplicate content, both internally and across sites (all of this company's implant sites have the same exact content, minus the bio pages and the local modifier). Average speed score. No structured data No links And these sites are ranking relatively quickly. The Vaughan site went live 3 months ago. But, what's boggling my mind is that they rank on the first page at all. It seems they're doing the exact opposite of what you're supposed to do, yet they rank relatively well.
Technical SEO | | nowmedia10 -
Page Juice not moving???
Moved URL's from ldnwicklesscandles.com to ldnwicklesscandles.co.uk because I wanted to rank better for UK where I'm located and thought also the .co.uk for my competitors may have been giving them the advantage. Use Squarespace 7 (transferred over from SS5)----they told me to set primary domain to .co.uk and I've done it. I've also done a 301 redirect and done a change of address in webmaster tools although I'm not sure if all of this is needed? Squarespace seem to think just setting the primary domain is enough. My question is its been a couple of weeks, I've resubmited to Google webmaster to try to speed things up, the new URL is appearing in Google but none of my Page Juice seems to be transferring yet? How long will it take? I know not all the juice will move over but my PA/DA is non existent now and I have no idea if I'm just being impatient or I've done something wrong here. Not a Pro, Just a small biz owner here so forgive me if this has been asked before.
Technical SEO | | ldnwickless0 -
Strange URL redirecting to my new site
Hi all, I recently relaunched a site on a brand new URL - www.boardwarehouse.co.uk. I've spent the last couple of weeks building some backlinks as well as developing a basic content strategy. We've started ranking for a few of our less competitive keywords which is great, however there's a strange site which either redirects or is mirroring our content. I'm at a complete loss as to what's causing this to happen and what i can do to stop it. On the attachment - my content is top and second. The fourth result is the offending site. Any help/ advice would be most helpful! Thanks in advance, Alick 0BSyNn6
Technical SEO | | Alick3000 -
Any ideas why this site is being penalized?
http://www.my-french-house.com/ has been online since around 2004 and has nearly always been in the top 10 serps for terms like 'property for sale in france'. However, over the last 12 months we've been hit really hard by Google and have fallen dramatically in rank. Can anyone give any insight into what may have happened? As an aside, we've had no message in the Google Webmaster Console and have not contacted Google about the apparent penalty / penalization. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. Cheers Jim
Technical SEO | | jimpannell0 -
Changed URL of all web pages to a new updated one - Keywords still pick the old URL
A month ago we updated our website and with that we created new URLs for each page. Under "On-Page", the keywords we put to check ranking on are still giving information on the old urls of our websites. Slowly, some new URLs are popping up. I'm wondering if there's a way I can manually make the keywords feedback information from the new urls.
Technical SEO | | Champions0 -
Canonical URL
I previously set the canonical Url in google web masters to the non www version, when I check my on page opt, it tells me that I have a critical issue with this. Should I change it in google web masters back to the www version? if so is there the possibility of negative results? Or is there a better way to deal with this? Note, I have inbound links pointing to both types.
Technical SEO | | bronxpad0 -
How much of an issue is it if a site is somehow connected to a site that was penalized by Google?
I am working with someone that is about to launch a new site, and one of the sites was affected by the Panda update. Does it matter if the two sites are connected? Share the same hosting provider and same Google Webmaster's account?
Technical SEO | | nicole.healthline0