Migrating website to new CMS and to https://
-
Hi,
We are migrating an old website to a new one built in Wordpress soon.
We also added an SSL to change to https://
Most of the url's stay the same. Can we just migrate from http to https on server level, and for the url's that do change just set a 301 redirect? Or are there other things we should take into account?
-
Thanks guys, some helpful tips !
-
Hi Mat_C,
For the HTTPS update, you'll want to ensure that all HTTP URL requests are redirected to the new HTTPS versions. Usually this can be done with a global redirect (often it's easiest to do this via your .htaccess file).
However, because you're migrating from what sounds like a HTML site or non-WordPress CMS, your page paths, file extensions, etc will also be changing - so you'll want to map redirects from the old URLs to their new WordPress counterparts more granularly. This should only be necessary for URLs that have external links (links on other sites) referring to them or URLs that users will have stored in bookmarks or will find in advertisements or other referral sources.
We usually look for URLs that have external links using a tool like Moz's Link Explorer and URLs that have Direct or Referral source traffic via Google Analytics / similar.
When you know what old URLs needs to be redirected to new URLs, there are WordPress plugins (like Redirection) that can make this easier than adding an exhaustive list to your .htaccess file or similar.
Best of Luck,
Mike -
Hi Mat_C
It's great that you are migrating and switching to https.
Regarding the switching on a server level, you can perfectly do it that way. Just remember that you need to address every URL that need to be, redirected to the new site, canonicalized or 404d.
There are a lot of issues to consider take a look in these resources about migrations:
The Website Migration Guide: SEO Strategy, Process, & Checklist - Moz Blog The Ultimate SEO Guide for Successful Web Migrations at #DigitalOlympus - AleydaSolis Migration Best Practices - SMX London 2018 <- backedup by JohnMu in this tweetHope it helps.
Best luck.
GR
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
-
Building new site on new web host with concerns
Hello, I have a domain with GoDaddy and current site is hosted there as well. I want to leave my domain with GoDaddy and build a brand new site on HostGator. The current website was designed to get us started. Not any significant traffic, backlinks, or SEO. The domain is not really what I want. There are 80 pages including those that are no longer in service. The keywords are not as relevant today. Current site domain is whiterocktech.net The new site will be very much different with SEO leading the way. We have designed it yet have not opened an account yet with HostGator. In addition, we have found a shorter more appropriate domain name. Not ideal but easy to type in yet it has a dash. This site is wr-crm.com. Questions: Does it make sense to "cut bait" from the current site given the lack use? Does it make sense to build the site and still set redirects from the old domain pages to a new one? Given so little traffic, is there really an effect on SEO if we sunset the old domain? Could I strip out the old domain website and just post a message on one page to come to our new site until old domain expires? I appreciate any insights on helping me with this decision. Mike
Technical SEO | | mmcgibbony0 -
SEO for a a static content website
Hi everyone, We would like to ask suggestions on how to improve our SEO for our static content help website. With the release of each new version, our company releases a new "help" page, which is created by an authoring system. This is the latest page: http://kilgray.com/memoq/2015/help-en/ I have a couple of questions: 1- The page has an index with many links that open up new subpages with content for users. It is impossible to add title tags to this subpages, as everything is held together by the mother page. So it is really hard to for users to find these subpage information when they are doing a google search. 2- We have previous "help" pages which usually rank better in google search. They also have the same structure (1 page with big index and many subpages) and no metadata. We obviously want the last version to rank better, however, we are afraid exclude them from bots search because the new version is not easy to find. These are some of the previous pages: http://kilgray.com/memoq/2014R2/help-en/ http://kilgray.com/memoq/62/help-en/ I would really appreciate suggestions! Thanks
Technical SEO | | Kilgray0 -
Mobile website indexing
Hi we have a mobile version of our website at mobile.gardening-services-edinburgh.com its been live for 5, maybe 6 months, it has its own mobile-sitemap.xml have tried submitting this sitemap to google and for some reason it does not index these pages any ideas, most welcome
Technical SEO | | McSEO0 -
Removed Product page on our website, what to do
We just removed an entire product category on our website, (product pages still exist, but will be removed soon as well) Should we be setting up re-directs, or can we simply delete this category and product
Technical SEO | | DutchG
pages and do nothing? We just received this in Google Webmasters tools: Google detected a significant increase in the number of URLs that return a 404 (Page Not Found) error. We have not updated the sitemap yet...Would this be enough to do or should we do more? You can view our website here: http://tinyurl.com/6la8 We removed the entire "Spring Planted Category"0 -
Website Cached Version
Hi all Why my full content is not appearing in Text only version(cached version): http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:zakoopi.com&es_sm=93&strip=1 Original website link: http://www.zakoopi.com/ How can I resolve this issue?
Technical SEO | | Obbserv0 -
URLs with dashes between words or nothing at all? ( ../some-content vs. ../somecontent)
Here's a quick and easy question: Is there any problem with not using dashes in between words for URLs? Obviously the readability factor is a concern, but from a search engine standpoint? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | tbinga0 -
How does Google find /feed/ at the end of all pages on my site?
Hi! In Google Webmaster Tools I find *.../feed/ as a 404 page in crawl errors. The problem is that none of these pages exist and they have no inbound links (except the start page). FYI, it´s a wordpress site. Example: www.mysite.com/subpage1/feed/ www.mysite.com/subpage2/feed/ www.mysite.com/subpage3/feed/ etc Does Google search for /feed/ by default or why do I keep getting these 404´s every day?
Technical SEO | | Vivamedia0