Safest way to launch a redesign
-
Hey MozFolk,
I was wondering what the best and SAFEST way to handle this situation is; I am doing a redesign of our current website, but the new site will have different content. Should we just forward the entire root domain in the HT Access file? Or redirect each and every URL using a 301? I know these, terms but never actually done it myself, and cannot risk losing the SEO weight of this website.
How do I handle a group of pages that they don't want to continue to use also? Do I just leave those URLs be, or do I forward all of them to one new page (or homepage) on the new site?
Please help me look like a rockstar and save the ship from sinking itself!
-
Hey thanks, the site is less than 30 pages. But would it be just as acceptable to just forward the entire domain, or is it better practice to 301 each individual page. And if I do 301 each page, do we ALSO need to forward the domain?
I appreciate your help!
Derek
-
It can be a pretty big job if you change the URL structures - depending on how large the website is.
Modesto Siotos wrote a blog on it here.
If you change the structure then ideally, you should forward every page to the closest replacement page on the new design using a 301.
Give the blog a good read, it should hopefully help.
Matt
-
How big is the site? It would be ideal to either keep the existing site structure so you don't need to worry about redirecting pages OR 301 as many pages as possible to the new URLs for those pages. If you have any pages on the current site that won't have a counterpart on the new site, then I recommend 301ing as many of those pages to the most relevant page on the new site as possible.
Of course, if your site is thousands or millions of pages large, then it's likely not feasible to manually go in and redirect every single page so I'd recommend at least redirecting the most popular pages to their new counterparts and then possibly redirect all of the remaining pages to the most relevant mid-level pages or even the homepage.
The last thing you want to do is simply redirect all of the pages to the root domain...
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
-
What's the best way to noindex pages but still keep backlinks equity?
Hello everyone, Maybe it is a stupid question, but I ask to the experts... What's the best way to noindex pages but still keep backlinks equity from those noindexed pages? For example, let's say I have many pages that look similar to a "main" page which I solely want to appear on Google, so I want to noindex all pages with the exception of that "main" page... but, what if I also want to transfer any possible link equity present on the noindexed pages to the main page? The only solution I have thought is to add a canonical tag pointing to the main page on those noindexed pages... but will that work or cause wreak havoc in some way?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau3 -
How to best add affiliate links in a way that minimizes panda risk?
We have a site of about 100.000 pages that is getting several million of visitors per year via organic search. We plan to add about 50.000 new pages gradually in the next couple of months and would like to add affiliate links to the new pages. All these 50.000 new pages will have unique quality data that a team has been researching for a while. I would like to add in the area under the fold or towards the end of the pages in an unobstrusive way affiliate links to about 5 different affiliate programs with affiliate links customized to page content and of real value to visitors. Since affiliate links are one of the factors that may trigger panda I am a bit nervous whether we should add the affiliate links and if there is any way of implementing the affiliate links in a way that they may be less likely to trigger panda. E.g. would you consider hiding affiliate links from google by linking to intermediate URL (which I would mark as noindex nofolllow) on our domain which then redirects to the final affiliate landing page (but google may notice via chrome or android data) ? Any other idea?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse0 -
Is there a way to rel = canonical only part of a page?
Hi guys: I'm doing SEO for a boat accessories store, and for instance they have marine AC systems, many of them, and while the part number, number of BTUs, voltage, and accessories change on some models, the description stays exactly the same across the board on many of them...people often search on Google by model number, and I worry that if I put rel = canonical, then the result for that specific model they're looking for won't come up, just the one that everything is being redirected to. (and people do this much more than entering a site nowadays and searching by product model, it's easier). Excuse my ignorance on this stuff, I'm good with link building and content creation, but the behind-the-scenes aspects... not so much: Can I "rel=canonical" only part of the page of the repeat models (the long description)? so people can still search by model number, and reach the model they are looking for? Am I misunderstanding something here about rel=canonical (Interesting thing, I rank very high for these pages with tons of repeat descriptions, number one in many places... but wonder if google attributes a sort of "across the site" penalty for the repeated content... but wouldn't ranking number 1 for these pages mean nothing's wrong?. Thanks)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidCiti1 -
I'm updating content that is out of date. What is the best way to handle if I want to keep old content as well?
So here is the situation. I'm working on a site that offers "Best Of" Top 10 list type content. They have a list that ranks very well but is out of date. They'd like to create a new list for 2014, but have the old list exist. Ideally the new list would replace the old list in search results. Here's what I'm thinking, but let me know if you think theres a better way to handle this: Put a "View New List" banner on the old page Make sure all internal links point to the new page Rel=canonical tag on the old list pointing to the new list Does this seem like a reasonable way to handle this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jim_shook0 -
How do you 301 redirect URLs with a hashbang (#!) format? We just lost a ton of pagerank because we thought javascript redirect was the only way! But other sites have been able to do this – examples and details inside
Hi Moz, Here's more info on our problem, and thanks for reading! We’re trying to Create 301 redirects for 44 pages on site.com. We’re having trouble 301 redirecting these pages, possibly because they are AJAX and have hashbangs in the URLs. These are locations pages. The old locations URLs are in the following format: www.site.com/locations/#!new-york and the new URLs that we want to redirect to are in this format: www.site.com/locations/new-york We have not been able to create these redirects using Yoast WordPress SEO plugin v.1.5.3.2. The CMS is WordPress version 3.9.1 The reason we want to 301 redirect these pages is because we have created new pages to replace them, and we want to pass pagerank from the old pages to the new. A 301 redirect is the ideal way to pass pagerank. Examples of pages that are able to 301 redirect hashbang URLs include http://www.sherrilltree.com/Saddles#!Saddles and https://twitter.com/#!RobOusbey.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Hiding Text in an SEO friendly way - is it possible?
Hello, I have a client who has very little (practically no) text content on his ecommerce website, on the home page and category / sub cat pages. We have drafted some text for him - but the designer has fought back against this as he feels it will break the design. Our proposed solution is to have some text visible - and the rest will be text that is hidden but can be revealed by clicking Read More. We are planning to follow these recommendations : http://www.shimonsandler.com/collapsible-div-seo-friendly/ We are not hiding text for the sake of it - but more to improve the UX. We of course want the text to be accessible - i.e. readable by screen readers. Does anyone have any experience or opinions in respect to taking this course of action, and is there anything we should make sure we either do or not do to stay on the side of the BIG G? Kind Regs, Rich
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RichBestSEO1 -
Best way to preserve site authority / juice when moving a property to Facebook?
Hi, so, I have a website. Let's call it a cooking website with about 300 pieces of content cross-listed among 20 categories. I want to move my entire site, hook line and sinker, to Facebook. My first thought was to do this with a domain-wide 301, as that would preserve most of the authority and juice my site has built over the years... but would this have a corollary effect of unfocusing my keyword strategy? E.g. is there a risk in doing a sitewide 301 to a single landing page, in that some of the juice I'd be passing to my new home page would be from, say, "recipes for jelly donuts?" Has anyone had an experience making a large product transition like this, and are there any current best practices? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kenn_Gold1 -
Whats the best way to handle product microformats such as hproduct, goodrelations on ecommerce for Google?
With web3.0 results with microfrmatting showing in google, yahoo etc through reviews, instock, events, sales, pricing etc.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RampUpInteractive0