SEO transfer to new website
-
My website currently has some strong SEO and i will be re-developing the website on a wordpress platform...which will change many of the existing URL. Will this affect the current pages that are well indexed in Google? Does using Wordpress or changing the URL extension (.html to .php) make a difference?
If i want to make a clean transition without effecting our existing SEO...what are some essential steps i need to take? Example. Current page is www.mydomain.com/name.html .... and the new URL would be www.mydomain.com/product/name.php
Thanks
-
Thanks ... many paths to the same result
-
Hi Dan. Great tip! My primitive method was to use to export a list of links in xenu, launch and do a linkchecker off a macro in excel. Looks like your your way is better!
-
Thanks Kevin!
Also, you can crawl the old site with Screaming Frog SEO Spider to check old URLs. Here's how to do that.
- Before switching to the new site, crawl the site with Screaming Frog.
- Save your crawl
- After switching to the new site, crawl the old URLs in list mode in Screaming Frog.
- If they all 301 redirect then you're good. If any of them 404 then redirects are not working or not in place and you need to fix them.
Alternatively you can also grab your old URLs from Google Analytics or Webmaster Tools if you forget to crawl the old site. But I like crawling because it picks up everything.
-
Redirecting the old URLs with 301s is the best way to carry over SEO value. You will transfer most of your link juice and help get traffic to your new pages.
As far as the PHP vs HTM, I don't believe it matters that much, I will say that your new URL structure is probably a little better than your current structure. The more information you can fit naturally into your URL is important, so having the product and the name is better than having just the name.
-
Make sure you 301 redirect as many pages as possible (if not all) to the proper landing page (see Moz's redirect tutorial). In most cases this will pass the majority of link juice (over 90%). Once launched, do a site:domain.com and click on each page to make sure it was redirected correctly. Also, monitor your webmaster tools for any alerts.
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
-
Migration to a new domain
Hi everyone, So i have one project where I'm planning to move current content on new domain, two reasons: 1. It seems current domain has some google penalty (backlink related, not manual) 2. Client wants rebranding and already has domain with new brand name. So as content is high quality and there is no content related penalty from google, what would be the best way to migrate existing content without passing any penalty AND without Google treating it as duplicate content. If i do 301 i suspect any penalty there is might follow, if i just copy existing content it won't be original content, what is the best solution here? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joelsemy0 -
Many New Urls at once
Hi, I have about 5,000 new URLs to publish. For SEO/Google - Should I publish them gradually, or all at once is fine? *By the way - all these URLs were already indexed in the past, but then redirected. Cheers,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | viatrading10 -
Does anyone know how dynamic/personalized website content affects SEO?
A client using Marketo has inquired about personalizing their website content to be personalized based on a persona. To be clear, I'm talking about key website pages, maybe even the Home page, not PPC/campaign specific landing pages. For example, areas of on the site would change to display content differently to a CEO vs a sales person. I'm new to marketing automation and don't exactly know how this piece works. Hoping someone here has experience or can provide pros/cons guidance. How would search engines work with this type of page? Here's Marketo's site explaining what it does: https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Web+Personalization+-+RTP
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Flock.Media0 -
SSL for SEO?
To obtain an SEO benefit from an SSL is there any particular type or brand which is recommended or has a track history? It seems you can pay anything between $20 and $???? (For that matter whatever you want to pay!). Any experience gratefully accepted! Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Buying a domain and redirecting it to your website (improves seo?)
hello everyone, imagine that I have a website with Pagerank 7, PA50 DA59... and there is another website who is my competitor... so I decide to buy them... Pagerank3 PA30, DA25.. So I redirect this website to my domain...Using google webmasters I say to Google that it was redirected... So does this improve my SEO or no? Do I get part of the link juice and so on? Can this really improve my rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FCRMediaLietuva0 -
Negative seo problem
Hello, Someone attacked our website with negative SEO and our website fell drastically. If i use bing webmaster tools link explorer i see dozens and dozens spam links but if open a link i don't find this link in that website. Is it possible that someone added the links and then remove thouse links when we got hit? Or is it possible to hide the links that they don't show up on webpage but they are still there? How can i use Google disavow links tool if there is no links in thouse websites but Bing link explorer shows spam domains pointing to our website. BR, T
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | otsinguturundus0 -
Linking Within Website
Hello - I have about 10 landing pages that I am focusing on ranking for and I'm doing okay. My question is should I have all these pages on a drop down menu from my home page or is the innerlinking too much? http://www.kasplacement.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ksundheim10 -
Advice on further SEO
I am frustrated by a lack of progress for a major keyword I want to rank for. I have made several pages, optimized with Onpage and even a whole site but I can't seem to get my ratings up. I am hoping somone can take a look at my pages and efforts and offer me some advice... Keyword is "National Currency" One site is devoted to this keyword: NationalCurrencyValues This site is ranked 30th and is down 9... and this page on another site is devoted to the same keyword ranked 26th is: http://www.antiquebanknotes.com/National-Currency.aspx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Banknotes0