Any new tips on how to speed up re-listing after re-design?
-
A few things around re-designing an older but well performing site for search and retaining/ improving SEO value.
Lots of effort has been put into content marketing and optimising individual pages on this site, it has a lot of links coming in from well-respected sites (but the domain name will remain the same so that shouldn't be an issue) so I'm very anxious about how the redesign will effect ranking, although the new site will be far more user friendly, beautiful, responsive where the old one is not and faster to load.
Would really like to avoid the search engine drop when the site first goes live if at all possible- One idea on this was to make the new site live on another domain - .co.uk for example, whilst keeping the old site up on the .com for a month or so, then switching the records so the new site is then visible on .com and the .co.uk redirects to it.
Does this sound at all sensible?!
Also any more advice on how best to ensure the new site will do better, not worse for search is hugely appreciated. We have cut a lot of content to make it more user friendly and easy to find information. We will be making sure all old links are redirected to new site (but as there are fewer pages on new site, will it matter if 5 old URLS point to one new URL for instance?)
Also what's the difference between 301 and 302 redirects!
Thank you so much in advance, massively appreciated your time!
-
This is brilliant info John, thank you so much. Could you clarify what you mean by
"Think about a) sending small amounts of traffic to your new pages to track conversions and interaction and b) you can expose some specific pages to the search engines to see how the search engines treat them. This would be very hard to do with a separate site." ?
Are you suggesting rolling out the new site page by page would be better than all at once? That wouldn't be possible if rolling out the site on the current domain... It would be great to get a proper handle on exactly what you mean.
Thanks for the contact info- I will be in touch!
-
Hi Emjmoz! Lots of stuff going on here. On to your questions.
First about redirects. 301 redirects are permanent redirects, which tells the search engines that a page has permanently moved to the location where the redirect ends (eg you redirect /page/ to /page1/, /page1/ is the final destination). Historically, only 301 redirects have passed link equity through them and been guaranteed to drop the original page (so /page1/ should now rank and /page/ should drop from the search index). Google has, in recent years, been slower to honor 301 redirects but all of this still holds true, and if you're having a big issue with Google not dropping a specific URL you can always Fetch as Googlebot within Search Console. To drop them out at scale, you can short term create a specific XML sitemap with the old URLs and submit in Search Console. Once you see the majority drop out, unsubmit that sitemap.
302 redirects are temporary, meaning the search engines will think that the original page may come back. 302 redirects historically do not pass link equity and do not drop the original URL out of the index. Some search engine representatives have said that if a 302 redirect is left in place for a long time they will start to treat it as a 301, but this is really in answer to some major CMSs using 302s by default and thus hurting their customers.
If you are doing a proper site migration to new URLs, use a 301.
To your question about duplicating the site on a different domain (eg .co.uk) for about a month and then redirecting it back to the original, I would question this. It would be better to put the new site on a subdomain or with a specific parameter on the end of the URL with those URLs canonical'd back to your current existing URLs. Otherwise, you risk duplicate content and hurting your search performance. As you roll the new site out, you should also think about a) sending small amounts of traffic to your new pages to track conversions and interaction and b) you can expose some specific pages to the search engines to see how the search engines treat them. This would be very hard to do with a separate site.
Good luck!
I also see that you mention that you'd like to find someone you could call on for future questions. My company GetCredo.com helps with this. Just search "technical seo getcredo" in Google and you'll find a list that you can contact. Or, feel free to reach out to me on Clarity.fm.
-
It would be great to find someone I could trust to call on for future SEO questions, I really need some technical SEO contacts I can work with long term!
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
-
Is it ok to redirect an old URL to new URL with anchor tag?
Ex. OLD URL - http://www.mysite.com/shoes/red/description NEW URL - http://www.mysite.com/shoes/red#desc Thanks in advance!
Web Design | | esiow20130 -
How we can check whether website design is good for SEO or not?
Is there any tool available to check website design whether it is good for SEO or not?
Web Design | | ross254sidney0 -
New website put up and ALL my keywords fell a LOT!???
I helped a client redesign their new website and we just went live a couple weeks ago. This morning I checked his campaign and 53 keywords fell DRAMATICALLY. Like 35-50 places down in Google for dozens of keywords!? I haven't ever seen a drop that's so dramatic when putting up a new site. Have you ever seen this? Will they bounce back? This site isn't significantly different than the last one. We did forward two other domains to this new site but that wouldn't make a difference, would it? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated! Matthew
Web Design | | Mrupp440 -
Tips for Panda-Proofing an Image Gallery
I'm currently working on a website that has a video, image and media gallery with over 9,000 items. The gallery can be found here:
Web Design | | Peter264
http://flyawaysimulation.com/images/16/microsoft-flight-simulator-x/ Every image has a page of its own. Therefore, essentially 9,000 pages of very thin content, especially the image pages with no UGC comments. Does anyone here have any tips to "panda-proof" these pages? The images still need to be indexed. What can we do here? The site also hosts videos, which of course the page the video resides on needs to stay in the index too (like youtube). Example of the video page here: http://flyawaysimulation.com/images/media/9371/fsps-3d-real-cockpit-effect-for-fsx/ Really want to hear your thoughts. Thanks in advance!0 -
Footer Links for Design Shops - Do They Help or Hurt?
I work on SEO for a number of clients at our agency, including our in-house SEO for our own website. I use Open Site Explorer all the time to analyze my competition in the SERPs and try to gain links from this insight. However, I've noticed a number of agencies and design shops that place a link in the footer of websites they've designed and created. For example "Site design by ABC Agency (hyperlinked to the agency's home page). Or I've seen small logos or graphics that link to the designer's site and use the "alt tag" to get stronger anchor text. From a design perspective, I don't care for this, but as a SEO...I can see why. We've designed a number of websites and have more in the pipeline, but have not used this tactic before. It seems like an irrelevant link from a content/user standpoint, however, it seems to work for a lot of agencies and design shops. Any input from the SEOmoz community would be great. Is it a short-lived strategy? Does it help or hurt your link-building and "rapport" with Google, Bing, Yahoo? Thanks everyone.
Web Design | | PHDL0 -
Website design for non-coders
Hi All Anyone any experience with using Headway Themes for wordpress. How does it compare to Artisteer 3 for ease of use for a non-coder. Does "Headway Themes" really allow for the designing of sharp business wordpress websites for people with no coding skills as it claims. Thanks Peter
Web Design | | peterds0 -
Old links in Google, new website affecting SEO?
Hi Guys, I have launched my website in october and it has already been indexed by google. Now I'm going to launch my redesign which comes with a new structure, content, links, etc. So the question is, do I have to resubmit my website to google to get rid of old links? Onsite Explorer shows links to my forum which has been spammed with p* stuff which has been already indexed as well. The forum is off now. I want to use SEOmoz to track my new website but I guess this could be a hard thing as old links etc will be shown as well. Is there any tool to let Google know about my changes? Does it affect my SEO in any way? Thank you for your help. Nick
Web Design | | NickITW0