Migrating to new subdomain with new site and new content.
-
Our marketing department has decided that a new site with new content is needed to launch new products and support our existing ones. We cannot use the same subdomain(www = old subdomain and ww1 = new subdomain)as there is a technically clash between the windows server currently used, and the lamp stack required to run the new wordpress based CMS and site. We also have an aging piece of SAAS software on the www domain which is makes moving it to it's own subdomain far too risky.
301's have been floated as a way of managing the transition. I'm not too keen on that idea due to the double effect of new subdomain and content, and the SEO impact it might have. I've suggested uploading the new site to the new subdomain while leaving the old site in place. Then gradually migrating sections over before turning parts of the old site off and using a 301 at that point to finalise the move.
The old site would inform user's there is a new version and it would then convert them to the new site(along with a cookie to auto redirect them in future.) while still leaving the old content in place for existing search traffic, bookmarks and visitors via static URLs.
Before turning off sections on the old site we would create rel canonicals to redirect to the new pages based on a a mapped set of URLs(this in itself concerns me as the rel canonical is essentially linking to different content).
Would be grateful for any advice on whether this strategy is flawed or whether another strategy might be more suitable?
-
Patrick is right, the migration guide is an excellent source to make sure you've covered all the bases. That said, setting up 301 redirects is gonna have to happen. It may hurt, it may take a lot of time, but it's the best way I've found to minimize any negative impacts to rankings and traffic. There are, of course, ways to speed this up, but I wouldn't suggest looking for a work-around. It sucks to do but that's why new sites and new content on new domains can be such a nightmare.
It's mind-numbing as a task but your manager/client will be very impressed by it. Make sure to look over the inbound links to your site to ensure no pages are missed thereby breaking some of your link network.
-
Hi there
I would run through this migration guide step by step as it is quite comprehensive and can definitely help in making this as seamless as possible.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
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
-
Redirecting old html site to new wordpress site
Hi I'm currently updating an old (8 years old) html site to wordpress and about a month ago I redirected some url's to the new site (which is in a directory) like this... Redirect 301 /article1.htm http://mysite.net/wordpress/article1/
Technical SEO | | briandee
Redirect 301 /article2.htm http://mysite.net/wordpress/article2/
Redirect 301 /article3.htm http://mysite.net/wordpress/article3/ Google has indexed these new url's and they are showing in search results. I'm almost finished the new version of site and it is currently in a directory /wordpress I intend to move all the files from the directory to the root so new url when this is done will be http://mysite.net/article1/ etc My question is - what to I do about the redirects which are in place - do I delete them and replace with something like this? Redirect 301 /wordpress/article1/ http://mysite.net/article1/
Redirect 301 /wordpress/article2/ http://mysite.net/article2/
Redirect 301 /wordpress/article3/ http://mysite.net/article3/ Appreciate any help with this0 -
Duplicate content on job sites
Hi, I have a question regarding job boards. Many job advertisers will upload the same job description to multiple websites e.g. monster, gumtree, etc. This would therefore be viewed as duplicate content. What is the best way to handle this if we want to ensure our particular site ranks well? Thanks in advance for the help. H
Technical SEO | | HiteshP0 -
Approach for an established site looking to serve different content to regions in a single country/lang
Hi guys, I have an established site that currently serves the same content to all regions - west and east - in a single country with the same language. We are now looking to vary the content across west and east regions - not dramatically, but the products offered will be slightly different. From what i gather, modifying the url is best for countries, so feels like overkill for regions within the same country. I'm also unlikely to have very unique content, outside of the varied products, so I'm mindful of duplicate/similar content, but I know I can use canonical tags to address. I have a fairly modern CMS that can target content based on region, but mindful of upsetting Google re; showing different content to what the bot might encounter, assuming this is still a thing. So, three questions from an SEO perspective - Do i need to really focus on changing my url structure, especially as I'm already established in a competitive market, or will I do more harm than good? Is the region in the URL a strong signal? If I should make some changes to the url and/or metadata, what are the best bang for buck changes you would make? How does Google Local fit into this? Is it a separate process via webmaster tools, or does it align to the above changes? Cheers!!! Jez
Technical SEO | | jez0000 -
Is this duplicate content?
All the pages have same information but content is little bit different, is this low quality and considered as duplicate content? I only trying to make services pages for each city, any other way for doing this. http://www.progressivehealthofpa.com/brain-injury-rehabilitation-pennsylvania/
Technical SEO | | JordanBrown
http://www.progressivehealthofpa.com/brain-injury-rehabilitation-new-york/
http://www.progressivehealthofpa.com/brain-injury-rehabilitation-new-jersey/
http://www.progressivehealthofpa.com/brain-injury-rehabilitation-connecticut/
http://www.progressivehealthofpa.com/brain-injury-rehabilitation-maryland/
http://www.progressivehealthofpa.com/brain-injury-rehabilitation-massachusetts/
http://www.progressivehealthofpa.com/brain-injury-rehabilitation-philadelphia/
http://www.progressivehealthofpa.com/brain-injury-rehabilitation-new-york-city/
http://www.progressivehealthofpa.com/brain-injury-rehabilitation-baltimore/
http://www.progressivehealthofpa.com/brain-injury-rehabilitation-boston/0 -
Is a shorter subdomain better?
For example, consider the two subdomains below: learn.bluelinkerp.com learnmore.bluelinkerp.com Would there likely be an appreciable difference between the two based on length alone? Also, would it be better to use a term that relates to our product in general such as "software.bluelinkerp.com"? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | BlueLinkERP0 -
One landing page with lots of content or content hub?
Interested in getting some opinions on if it's better to build one great landing page with tons of content or build a good landing page and build more content (as blog posts?) and interlink them back to the landing/hub page? Thoughts and opinions? Chris
Technical SEO | | sanctuarymg0 -
What are some of the negative effects of having duplicate content from other sites?
This could include republishing several articles from another site with permission.
Technical SEO | | Charlessipe0 -
Internal Linking: Site-wide VS Content Links
I just watched this video in which Matt Cutts talks about the ancient 100 links per page limit. I often encounter websites which have massive navigation (elaborate main menu, side bar, footer, superfooter...etc) in addition to content area based links. My question is do you think Google passes votes (PageRank and anchor text) differently from template links such as navigation to the ones in the content area, if so have you done any testing to confirm?
Technical SEO | | Dan-Petrovic0