Domain Transfer Process / Bulk 301's Using IIS
-
Hi guys - I am getting ready to do a complete domain transfer from one domain to another completely different domain for a client due to a branding/name change. 2 things - first, I wanted to lay out a summary of my process and see if everyone agrees that its a good approach, and second, my client is using IIS, so I wanted to see if anyone out there knows a bulk tool that can be used to implement 301's on the hundreds of pages that the site contains? I have found the process to redirect each individual page, but over hundreds its a daunting task to look at.
The nice thing about the domain transfer is that it is going to be a literal 1:1 transfer, with the only things changing being the logo and the name mentions. Everything else is going to stay exactly the same, for the most part. I will use dummy domain names in the explanation to keep things easy to follow: www.old-domain.com and www.new-domain.com. The client's existing home page has a 5/10 GPR, so of course, transferring Mojo is very important.
The process:
- Clean up existing site 404's, duplicate tags and titles, etc. (good time to clean house).
- Create identical domain structure tree, changing all URL's (for instance) from www.old-domain.com/freestuff to www.newdomain.com/freestuff.
- Push several pages to a dev environment to test (dev.new-domain.com). Also, replace all instances of old brand name (images and text) with new brand name.
- Set up 301 redirects (here is where my IIS question comes in below). Each page will be set up to redirect to the new permanent destination with a 301. TEST a few.
- Choose lowest traffic time of week (from analytics data) to make the transfer ALL AT ONCE, including pushing new content live to the server for www.new-domain.com and implementing the 301's. As opposed to moving over parts of the site in chunks, moving the site over in one swoop avoids potential duplicate content issues, since the content on the new domain is essentially exactly the same as the old domain. Of course, all of the steps so far would apply to the existing sub-domains as well, IE video.new-domain.com.
- Check for errors and problems with resolution issues. Check again. Check again.
- Write to (as many as possible) link partners and inform them of new domain and ask links to be switched (for existing links) and updated (for future links) to the new domain. Even though 301's will redirect link juice, the actual link to the new domain page without the redirect is preferred.
- Track rank of targeted keywords, overall domain importance and GPR over time to ensure that you re-establish your Mojo quickly.
- That's it!
Ok, so everyone, please give me your feedback on that process!!
Secondly, as you can see in the middle of that process, the "implement 301's" section seems easier said than done, especially when you are redirecting each page individually (would take days). So, the question here is, does anyone know of a way to implement bulk 301's for each individual page using IIS? From what I understand, in an Apache environment .htaccess can be used, but I really have not been able to find any info regarding how to do this in bulk using IIS. Any help here would be GREATLY APPRECIATED!!
-
any answer here Jacob?
-
Is it better from an SEO perspective to have actual 301's in place for each page, as opposed to one for all?
-
Yes. Since the files will be the same, you're just swapping the domain.
-
Hi Jacob -- awesome, thanks so much for sending this. Just to clarify - I'm assuming that this is ONLY USABLE if the new file structure is in fact IDENTICAL, correct?
-
Heyas,
So I got great news for you. Since Step 2 results in identical file structures, you shouldn't need crazy 301's.
In fact, all you need to do is setup a wildcard redirect. In IIS, edit web.config file, modify or add
the following section to its rewrite section<rewrite><rules><rule name="old to new" enabled="true"><match url="(.*)"><conditions><add input="{HTTP_HOST}" negate="true" pattern="^www\.([.a-zA-Z0-9]+)$"></add></conditions> <action type="Redirect" url="<a href=" http:="" www.newdomain.com="" {r:0"="">http://www.NEWDOMAIN.com/{R:0}" appendQueryString="true" redirectType="Permanent" /></action></match></rule></rules></rewrite> Additionally, you can use the web install manager to install the RewriteModule. Coming from *, I actually will give praise to M$ on the GUI / ease of use.
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
-
If I'm using a compressed sitemap (sitemap.xml.gz) that's the URL that gets submitted to webmaster tools, correct?
I just want to verify that if a compressed sitemap file is being used, then the URL that gets submitted to Google, Bing, etc and the URL that's used in the robots.txt indicates that it's a compressed file. For example, "sitemap.xml.gz" -- thanks!
Technical SEO | | jgresalfi0 -
Pages with 301 redirects showing as 200 when crawled using RogerBot
Hi guys, I recently did an audit for a client and ran a crawl on the site using RogerBot. We quickly noticed that all but one page was showing as status code 200, but we knew that there were a lot of 301 redirects in place. When our developers checked it, they saw the pages as 301s, as did the Moz toolbar. If page A redirected to page B, our developers and the Moz toolbar saw page A as 301 and page B as 200. However the crawl showed both page A and page B as 200. Does anyone have any idea why the crawl may have been showing the status codes as 200? We've checked and the redirect is definitely in place for the user, but our worry is that there could be an issue with duplicate content if a crawler isn't picking up on the 301 redirect. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Welford-Media0 -
How can you best use additional domains with important keywords
Currently I have a corporate website that is ranking all right. However, I have some additional domains containing import search terms that I would like to use to get higher rankings for the corporate website, or allow these domains to generate more traffic for the corporate website. What are best practice in using these domains with keyword terms, to make most use of them, for ideally both ranking as well as generating additional traffic. All input is highly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | moojoo0 -
Should I use my competitor's name in my content to help my rankings?
If I have a competitor that ranks higher than me, would it be helpful to use their name in my content, or in my meta information?
Technical SEO | | greaterstudio0 -
New Site maintaining rank on old URL's
Hi I have a new website going live which has a different page names etc i.e. the old site had pages that are ranking called aboutus.html and the new site is called about.php What is the best approach to maintain the rank and also on orphaned pages Many Thanks
Technical SEO | | ocelot0 -
Alternatives to SEOmoz's Crawl Diagnistics
I really like SEOmoz's Crawl diagnostics reports, it goes through the pages and finds all sorts of valuable information, I wanted to know if there are any other services that compete against this specific service, to test the accuracy of their crawl diagnistics. Thanks
Technical SEO | | BestOdds0 -
Would duplicate listings effect a client's ranking if they used same address?
Lots of duplication on directory listings using similar or same address, just different company names... like so-and-so carpet cleaning; and another listing with so-and-so janitorial services. Now my client went from a rank around 3 - 4 to not even in the top 50 within a week. -- -- -- Would duplication cause this sudden drop? Not a lot of competition for a client using keyword (janitorial services nh); -- -- -- would a competitor that recently optimized a site cause this sudden drop? Client does need to optimize for this keyword, and they do need to clean up this duplication. (Unfortunately this drop happened first of March -- I provided the audit, recommendations/implementation and still awaiting the thumbs up to continue with implementation). --- --- --- Did Google make a change and possibly find these discrepancies within listings and suddenly drop this client's ranking? And they there's Google Places:
Technical SEO | | CeCeBar
Client usually ranks #1 for Google Places with up to 12 excellent reviews, so they are still getting a good spot on the first page. The very odd thing though is that Google is still saying that need to re-verify their Google places. I really would like to know for my how this knowledge how a Google Places account could still need verification and yet still rank so well within Google places on page results? because of great reviews? --- Any ideas here, too? _Cindy0 -
IIS Work Around 301 Redirects
We are redirecting page-level content (about 500 pages) from several sub domains to our main site. With IIS, It’s my understanding that file locations must match. For example: subdomain/pathA/filename1
Technical SEO | | DigitalMkt
mainsite/pathA/filename1 Since the sub domain files are not on the main site, this means we'd create up to 500 zero byte dummy files on the new server and replicate the sub domain directory structure. With IIS is there a work around for handling page level redirects without duplicating the file location? In the case of white papers, videos and case studies, we'll imlement directory level redirection. Thanks in advance.0