Best practice to change the URL of all my site pages
-
Hi,
I need to change all my site pages URL as a result of moving the site into another CMS platform that has its own URL structure:
- Currently the site is highly ranked for all relevant KWs I am targeting.
- All pages have backlinks
- Content and meta data should remain exactly the same.
- The domain should stay the same
The plan is as follow:
- Set up the new site using a temporary domain name
- Copy over all content and meta data
- Set up all redirects (301)
- Update the domain name and point the live domain to the new one
- Watch closely for 404 errors and add any missing redirects
Questions:
- Any comments on the plan?
- Is there a way (the above plan or any other) to make sure ranking will not be hurt
- What entries should I add to the sitemap.xml: new pages only or new pages and the pages from the old site?
Thanks,
Guy.
-
As Ben and RDK shared, your transition plan is solid.
Is there a way (the above plan or any other) to make sure ranking will not be hurt
If you have links, there will always be some loss of DA during the transition. Approximately 90% of the link value will transfer with the 301, but there is some degradation. This can be minimized by changing any links you control to the new site. This includes social media pages, signatures, etc.
Another recommendation I make to anyone moving sites is to create a link building campaign 30 days after the site move to generate links to the new site. These links will help offset any minor loss from the move. If the move is done properly, you can be back to your old rankings or better within 60 days after the move.
What entries should I add to the sitemap.xml: new pages only or new pages and the pages from the old site?
A sitemap should include all pages on the new site you wish to be included in the index.
One final note. Since you are changing URLs during this move, think out the new URLs carefully. Try to build URLs which will last 20 years. Try to account for any foreseeable changes. One example is to remove technology extensions from URLS. Instead of mysite.com/products.html use mysite.com/products.
-
Some quick thoughts:
1. Take advantage of seomoz site crawler for issues sometime before going live- this will help detect any possible URL (duplicate) problems that are common in transition. Don't forget about redirecting any PPC campaigns you may have.
2. Based on experience, ranking will suffer in transition, regardless of preparation. If you spent time tightening your SEO metadata and structured your website exactly the same, you should see overall improvement after a few weeks. How quickly you are reindexed varies from one site to another. If you're seeing 20,000+ visitors a month, indexing should be relatively quick (that's just based off of my small statistical sample of personal experience.)
3. XML sitemap should be the current site you want to have indexed... not sure what you mean when you say you'd include the old site pages, which might lead to indexing problems no matter how you might work that out. With luck, your 301's will feed the wounded patient until Googlebot comes to stitch everything up.
If you could document your experience, it would be really helpful. Test and measurement = smart SEO
-
We have just completed a similar update on our site using pretty much exactly the technique you describe above. As you say keep a real close eye on the 404 pages as they can catch you out. The other thing to watch out for is to make sure you maintain any historical 301 redirects as they are easy to miss when implementing such a big change. We suddenly found loads of old links that we didn't even realise existed!
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
-
I have a metadata issue. My site crawl is coming back with missing descriptions, but all of the pages look like site tags (i.e. /blog/?_sft_tag=call-routing)
I have a metadata issue. My site crawl is coming back with missing descriptions, but all of the pages look like site tags (i.e. /blog/?_sft_tag=call-routing)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | amarieyoussef0 -
Dfferent url of some other site is shown by Google in cace copy of our site's page
Hi, When i check cached copy of url of my site http://goo.gl/BZw2Zz , the url in cache copy shown by Google is of some other third party site. Why is Google showing third party url in our site's cached url. Did any of you guys faced any such issue. Regards,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vivekrathore0 -
Slug best practices?
Hello, my team is trying to understand how to best construct slugs. We understand they need to be concise and easily understandable, but there seem to be vast differences between the three examples below. Are there reasons why one might be better than the others? http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/06/20/bad-boys-yum-yum-violent-criminal-or-not-this-mans-mugshot-is-heating-up-the-web/ http://hollywoodlife.com/2014/06/20/jeremy-meeks-sexy-mug-shot-felon-viral/ http://www.tmz.com/2014/06/19/mugshot-eyes-felon-sexy/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheaterMania0 -
One site two languages - what to do with urls?
Hi, We are working with a client who has a Spanish site which is in English and Spanish, what is the best url structure to go for? www.domain.es and en.domain.es or www.domain.es and www.domain.es/en or none of the above?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | J_Sinclair0 -
What's the Best Host For WordPress sites
Our site has gone down twice in a week...hosted by Fat Cow. So we're going to switch hosts this week. We currently have 2 WP sites on a Fat Cow VPS. 8 GB file size and 2 GB data transfer monthly. We use a CDN and video hosting company (Wistia) so the file sizes are small. I've contacted several hosts and narrowed it down to WP Engine, Rack Space and A Small Orange. I care about fast page load time (1 second), 99.999% up-time and great support. Price is a secondary concern. I'm leaning towards WP Engine, but wanted to ask Moz community before making a decision. Any other hosting companies I should call?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Branden_S0 -
When removing a product page from an ecommerce site?
What is the best practice for removing a product page from an Ecommerce site? If a 301 is not available and the page is already crawled by the search engine A. block it out in the robot.txt B. let it 404
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bryan_Loconto0 -
E-commerce Site - Filter Pages
Hi, We have a client who has a fairly large e-commerce site that went live quite recently. The site is near enough fully indexed by Google, but one thing I've noticed is that filtered search results pages are being indexed, all with duplicate page titles. Obviously this is an issue that needs to be looked at ASAP. My questions is this - would we be better tweaking site settings so that page titles are constructed from the filters (brand/price/size) and therefore unique (and useful for searchers who are after a specific brand or size of a given item). Or should we rel=canonical the filtered pages so that they are eventually dropped from the index (the safer of the two options)? Thanks in advance for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasarrow0 -
Duplicate URL home page
I just got a duplicate URL error on by SEOMOZ report - and I wonder if I should worry about it Assume my site is named www.widgets.com I'm getting duplicate url from http://www.widgets.com & http://www.widgets.com/ Do the search engines really see this as different on the home page? The general drift on the web is that You site should look like Home page = http://www.widgets.com And subpages http://www.widgets.com/widget1/ Of course it seems as though the IIS7 slash tool will rewrite everything Including the home page to a slash.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ThomasErb0