Re-Platforming our ecommerce site. What am I missing?
-
Hello,
We're going to be moving our niche ecommerce site with a catalog of over 4,000 products over to a new ecommerce platform (magento). All url structure will be changing although about 70% of the content will be staying the same such as meta info and product page content.
We'll be doing 301 redirects of all old url's to new url's and we'll have a new google sitemap submitted immediatly.
So my question is.. What MORE can I do to keep our site from dropping in the search engines while our site is being re-crawled? Does anyone have any experience regarding what normally happens during a website replatform such as this?
Thanks in advance for your help!
-
Thanks for all the great advice guys. Our new url's will be keyword rich and seo friendly, our category urls will be much more seo friendly as our site we're moving off of only has numbers associated to those url's.
If anyone has anything else to add, I'd be happy to listen. This is a big move for us and a bit scary.
Thanks!
-
Just going to add to what these guys have said, you're thinking of the right thing.
One thing I'd suggest (but you've probably already thought of) is you say your URL structure is changing pretty radically. Is that because you're going to more englishy, SEO friendly URLs? If the URLs all change to just numbers and URL parameters that's obviously a bad thing.
-
Depending upon the link profile, domain strength and authority of your website, you should be good between 3 days to 1 month. I have seen scenarios where a 301'd URL got replaced with no drop in rankings in as little as 3 days and on a different website, lower authority as much as 30 days. But yes, you should be back to business with the steps you have already laid down.
Best of luck
-
Sounds like you've got your bases covered.
One suggestion - make sure you don't block the old URL's with your robots.txt file - you need to make sure the robots can reach the old pages, then follow the 301's to update their index.
I'd also use your favorite backlink profile to check external links - I'd contact the really juicy sites linking to you and inform them of the change, asking them to correct the link to the proper page, for server loads and users. This way, you won't be losing any juice through the redirects. Also make sure you're not losing juice by having external links go to 404 pages - would be a good time to recover all lost juice.
While you may drop in rankings temporarily, things should sort themselves out in a bit.
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
-
Do you think have to re-submit my site to search engines after I made improvements?
Some time ago I started to do SEO for a one-page website and didn't get any positive result: no traffic, no filled in online booking form (yet another, multiple page website offering the same service yielded in multiple filled-in "schedule an appointment" forms). I found out my one-page website was considered to be "keyword-spamming" and converted it to a multiple page one. Its domain authority went up, but it doesn't still bring any traffic. I am thinking maybe I have to let the search engines know that it has been updated so they stop penalizing it? Do you think it might help and if yes, what exactly I should do? Will be thankful very much for any suggestion!
Technical SEO | | kirupa0 -
Mobile site backlinks?
Hello, Our mobile site redirects to desktop in a desktop browser and vice versa; however, they are different sites. This said, shouldn't the backlinks for our mobile site be the same as for our desktop site since one redirects to the other. We show no backlinks in my analysis? Any help or insight would be extremely appreciated! Thank you!
Technical SEO | | lfrazer1 -
How to Switch My Site to HTTPS in GWT?
I recently bought an SSL certificate and moved my site over to HTTPS. Now how do I make the change in Google Webmaster Tools?
Technical SEO | | sbrault740 -
Site architecture & breadcrumbs
Hi A client hasn't structured site architecture in a silo type format so breadcrumbs are not predicating in a topical hierarchy as one would desire (or at least i think one would prefer) For example: say the site is called www.fruit.com and it has a category called 'types of fruit' and then sub/content pages called things like 'apples' and 'pears'. So in terms of architecture that should be: www.fruit.com/types-of-fruit/apples and www.fruit.com/types-of-fruit/pears etc etc The client has kept it all flat so instead architecture is: www.fruit.com/types-of-fruit and www.fruit.com/apples and www.fruit.com/pears As a result breadcrumbs follow suit and hence since also not employing logical predication dont reflect the topical & sub-topical hierarchy I have seen that some seo's at least used to think this was better for seo since kept the page/s nearer the root but surely its better to structure site architecture in a logical topical hierarchy so long as dont go beyond say 3 or 4 directories/forward slashes in the url's? Also is it theoretically possible to keep url structure as is (flat) and just edit/customise the breadcrumbs to reflect a topical hierarchy in a silo structure rather than change the entire site architecture & required 301'ing etc in order to do this (or is that misleading or just not possible?) Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Including videos on an eCommerce website.
Hi,
Technical SEO | | ChrisHolgate
We're about to start integrating video content on our eCommerece site in order to bolster the quantity and diversity of useful content that each page presents a potential customer. We’re talking product reviews, information relating to the differences between different products and company information. From an SEO perspective it has been suggested that Google will like this however I have a question regarding the actual method of integration. Usually I would just insert some embed code linking to the correct video on our YouTube channel however I’m really conscious that a search engine will just see the embed code, notice the page loads slightly slower and not really gain anything useful from the video file. I’m assuming that this isn’t the case but I have several questions: - Would you host on YouTube and simply insert the embed code in to the page. Would any alternative site (or even self-hosted) be preferable? - Should I be padding out either side of the embed code with a description of the video and an annotation on OUR site? - Does Google actually look at the link and ascertain the relevance of the video file to the actual page? If it does this does it gain anything useful that could help on-page SEO? These are probably all pretty basic questions for which I do apologise but I want to make sure that before spending a sizable amount of time on this that we start off with a correct integration! Many thanks0 -
Configure a mobile site with WMT
Hello Everyone, I'm in a situation that I have no idea how to handle. I have only really dealt with RWD, and not a mobile-specific site. Anyway, I have a client who is launching an m.domian.com for their mobile site, how do I add/configure this in WMT? Thanks Zach
Technical SEO | | Zachary_Russell0 -
How do I set up a site review for a password protected site?
We need to conduct a SEO analysis for a website that is on a private, password protected development site -- is there anyway for SEOMoz tools to access and analyze a PW protected site? Thank you, Sara Merten
Technical SEO | | kev110 -
301 redirect on the root of the site
Due to some historic difficulties with our URL Rewriter, we are in the position of having the root of our site 301 redirected to another page. So the root of our site: http://www.propertylive.co.uk/ has a 301 redirect to: http://www.propertylive.co.uk/home.aspx We're aware that this isn't great and we're working to fix this completely, but what impact will this have on our SEO?
Technical SEO | | LianWard860