Large Site SEO - Dev Issue Forcing URL Change - 301, 302, Block, What To Do?
-
Hola,
Thanks in advance for reading and trying to help me out. A client of mine recently created a large scale company directory (500k+ pages) in Drupal v6 while the "marketing" type pages of their site was still in manual hard-coded HTML. They redesigned their "marketing" pages, but used Drual v7. They're now experiencing server conflicts with both instances of Drupal not allowing them to communicate/be on the same server. Eventually the directory will be upgraded to Drupal v7, but could take weeks to months the client does not want to wait for the re-launch. The client wants to push the new marketing site live, but also does not want to ruin the overall SEO value of the directory and have a few options, but I'm looking to help guide them down the path of least resistance:
- Option 1: Move the company directory onto a subdomain and the "marketing site" on the www. subdomain. Client gets to push their redesign live, but large scale 301s to the directory cause major issues in terms of shaking up the structure of the site causing ripple effects into getting pulled out of the index for days to weeks. Rankings and traffic drop, subdomain authority gets lost and the company directory health looks bad for weeks to months. However, 301 maintains partial SEO value and some long tail traffic still exists. Once the directory gets moved to Drupal v7, the directory will then cancel the 301 to the subdomain and revert back to original www. subdomain URLs
- Option 2: Block the company directory from search engines with robots.txt and meta instructions, essentially cutting off the floodgates from the established marketing pages. No major scaling 301 ripple effect, directory takes a few weeks to filter out of the index, traffic is completely lost, however once drupal v7 gets upgraded and the directory is then re-opened, directory will then slowly gain back SEO value to get close to old rankings, traffic, etc.
- Option 3: 302 redirect? Lose all accumulate SEO value temporarily... hmm
- Option 4: Something else?
As you can see, this is not an ideal situation. However, a decision has to be made and I'm looking to chose the lesser of evils. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks again
-Chris
-
I would heartily agree with this. The workaround is going to be a nightmare and may cause him a lot more pain.
-
I don't envy your situation.
I think that I might try another phone call to the client advising that a two week (or whatever) delay is in the best interest of his business.....
.... I would be willing to risk his temper than do something that I don't recommend. Lots of clients would cuss you now but thank you down the road.
... just saying what I would do.. not trying to argue.
-
Thanks for the ideas.
I'm really looking for an option if upgrading Drupal on either the marketing site or directory is NOT an option. What is the best temporary solution that will cause the fewest major short and long term problems.
-
As I see it they have three options:
1. Upgrade the directory to D7 fast! If there aren't a lot of custom modules this shouldn't be a huge deal, no matter the number of nodes. As long as everything is disabled the upgrade isn't a seriously big deal.
2. If upgrading is really a big issue due to a lot of custom coding, then perhaps downgrade the marketing site to D6 if there aren't tons of pages?
3. I would suggest a combination of both - upgrade the directory to D7 and merge both sites into one D7 install - no sense running two installs when one would do just fine.
-
As an SEO, I agree with you.
Unfortunately, as a consultant I need to provide an answer as changes are going to be made regardless. My job is to pick the "lesser of two evils" decision as to how best preserve the SEO value. Any help there?
-
Thanks... that is nice traffic...
So, if this was my site I would tell the dev guys that we need the version conflicts solved ASAP.
I would not move the directory or the marketing pages.
I would put pressure on the dev guys and not allow impatience to compromise the long-term success of the site.
-
The directory is getting well over 200k visits per month and is majorly competitive for a number of mid to long tail terms.
-
Is the directory getting any traffic from any search engine?
Has the directory gotten any valuable links that were not created by you?
If the answer to those questions is "no" or "very little" then I'd say that it has very little SEO value and could be a weight on the rest of the site.
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
-
Any way to force a URL out of Google index?
As far as I know, there is no way to truly FORCE a URL to be removed from Google's index. We have a page that is being stubborn. Even after it was 301 redirected to an internal secure page months ago and a noindex tag was placed on it in the backend, it still remains in the Google index. I also submitted a request through the remove outdated content tool https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/removals and it said the content has been removed. My understanding though is that this only updates the cache to be consistent with the current index. So if it's still in the index, this will not remove it. Just asking for confirmation - is there truly any way to force a URL out of the index? Or to even suggest more strongly that it be removed? It's the first listing in this search https://www.google.com/search?q=hcahranswers&rlz=1C1GGRV_enUS753US755&oq=hcahr&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j69i60j0l3.1700j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MJTrevens0 -
301 Redirects to relative URLs not absolute a problem?
Hi we recently did a migration and a lot of content changed locations see: https://d.pr/i/RvqI81 Basically, the 301 goes to the correct location but its a relative URL (as you can see from the screenshot) rather than absolute URL. Do you think this is a high priority issue from an SEO standpoint, should we get the developer to change the redirects to absolute? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cathywix0 -
GWT url parameter issue/question
Hi Moz community, I'm having an issue with URL parameters in GWT. The tracking taxonomy for my websites is used as either /?izid=... (internal) OR /?dzid=... (external) I put tracking parameters in GWT as izid & dzid, but it hasn't picked up any URLs or examples in regards to these parameters. It's been about 2 months since we've started using this so I want to make sure Google isn't indexing as duplicate content. Side note: any page that uses a tracking parameter automatically adds rel="canonical" to the original page. Could this be the reason that GWT doesn't pick up any URLs for tracking parameters and/or do I not need to worry about adding paramters if I already have the canonical attribute automatically in place. Thanks for your help,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IceIcebaby
-Reed0 -
How do I test images in WP migration without Changing URLs?
I'm redesigning example.com on a subdomain of my own site, so at example.mysite.com. As part of the redesign, I am optimizing the site's images. I used Wordpress Importer to get the content to the development site, but I did not import the images. Instead, I added the images to the development site by copying and moving over the contents of example.com's uploads folder. The posts at example.mysite.com are showing the images, but they are pulling them from the original location. I tried adding the following code to wp-config.php under the (misunderstood?) impression that the image URLs would use the development site's domain: 1 define('WP_HOME', 'http://example.mysite.com');
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kimmiedawn
2 define('WP_SITEURL', 'http://example.mysite.com'); I am not seeing any change and the images are still pulling from the original site. How can I test the images on the current site without actually changing the URLs in the database. (If I understand correctly, I could search and replace, but that is not what I am trying to achieve.) The original domain is not changing with the redesign, so there is no need to actually change the URLs. I just need to test the images, as I will be removing those that are not being used as well as optimizing the remaining images before moving the redesigned site over to the original domain.0 -
SEO for an exponentially growing site?
Hey Mozers! I was having a quick chat with a friend the other day on doing SEO for a site that grows in page size at an exponential rate and was just wondering how you would go about optimizing it? The example that we used would be a site that allowed users to upload videos and then have people vote on two videos against each other. So, if there are 100 uploaded videos and each of them are pared up with the other 99 to create a unique voting/battle page which has it's own unique URL, the site can get very large, VERY quickly. Meaning if just one more video is uploaded there would be How exactly would you go about optimizing the site? My biggest area of confusion would be generating sitemaps. I'm aware of best practices with large sitemaps (i.e. having a sitemap of sitemaps, not going over 50k in entries per sitemap etc..) But, how would you go about creating the sitemaps for this website if it's growing at an exponential rate, if at all? If you have any other questions feel free to ask and I'll clarify it. Thanks! 😃 **TL;DR How would you optimize a site that grows at an exponential rate? **
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JordanChoo0 -
Changing a url from .html to .com
Hello, I have a client that has a site with a .html plugin and I have read that its best to not have this. We currently have pages ranking with this .html plug in. However If we take the plug in out will we lose rankings? would we need a 301 or something?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0 -
Splitting a Site into Two Sites for SEO Purposes
I have a client that owns a business that really could be easily divided into two separate business in terms of SEO. Right now his web site covers both divisions of his business. He gets about 5500 visitors a month. The majority go to one part of his business and around 600 each month go to the other. So about 11% I'm considering breaking off this 11% and putting it on an entirely different domain name. I think I could rank better for this 11%. The site would only be SEO'd for this particular division of the company. The keywords would not be in competition with each other. I would of course link the two web sites and watch that I don't run into any duplicate content issues. I worry about placing the redirects from the pages that I remove to the new pages. I know Google is not a fan of redirects. Then I also worry about the eventual drop in traffic to the main site now. How big of a factor is traffic in rankings? Other challenges include that the business services 4 major metropolitan areas. Would you do this? Have you done this? How did it work? Any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MSWD0 -
An Infrastructure Change for a Large eCommerce Site - Any advice?
Hello Mozers, We're currently under going quite a large infrastructure change to our website and I wouldn't to hear your thoughts on the type of things we should be careful of. We currently have close to 4,000 individual products each with their own page. The seo work is then driven behind certain pages which house a catalog display of groups of products. The groups are done by style. An example is we have a page called "Style A" which displays 8 different colours of style A. We then seo the style A page and the individual items received minimal seo work. The change would involve having one individual product page for each style but on that page the user would have the ability to purchase the different colours/variations via menus. This will result in approximately a %70 reduction in the size of our site (as several products will no longer be published) The things we are currently concerned with are: 1. The lose of equity to those unwanted 'style A' pages - I think a series of careful planned 301s will be the solution. 2. Possible loss of long tail traffic to the individual products which might not be caught by one individual page per style. 3. Internal link structure will need to be monitored to make sure that we're still highlight the most important pages as well, important. Sorry for the long post, it's a difficult change to explain without revealing the clients name - any other things we should be thinking about would be greatly appreciated! Thanks Nigel
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NigelJ0