Change e-commerce platform and domain name SEO issue.
-
Hi,
We are looking to switch from Bigcommerce to either Magento or Shopify, but we have some concern about the redirecting of all URL and not sure where to help.
Also, we are looking to remove "hyphen" www.ide-home.com.au in our domain name, again it is all about 301 redirecting. We need SEO expert to help us with all changes that minimize the effect on Google. Does anyone can suggest which company or who we can ask for help? Thanks very much.
-
If you are looking for my adivce i will suggest you to go without changing the hyphen and here are my reasons for that.
Changing hyphen simply means changing the domain name for your website and redirection on the domain level always loose the link juice so your overall redirection from old domain to the new domain will loose the SEO power.
Changing eCommerce platform is great but for that you should always keep in mind that the new platform have lots and lots of Seo plugins like the platform should allow the cahngings in robots.txt, indepandance on the xml sitemap level, titles, descriptions and more SEO related areas should be covered within the new platform.
My point of view about your situation!
-
Hi Moosa,
Thanks for your true advise. We are still debating should we remove the hyphen on the domain name. One of our concern is the hyphen on the domain may affect SEO or Link Building, but we have no way to proof at this moment.
And we have read lots of articles, but still do not have conclusion. We are actually looking to redesign our e-commerce store and change to a better platform. After that we will run some online PR campaign, linking building and SEO works. So we have to decide weather we should keep the hyphen or should we remove the hyphen.
-
Moosa is correct!
It may be tempting to "start fresh", but don't give up all that great information and link juice when you switch! 301 every product, and category page you can. these will be (301) permanent redirects that will tell google this is the new home of your website.
as to removing the hyphen, you may be able to do a 301 in your server's .htacess file. depending on what redirection software your host offers, the code for this will vary slightly.
-
Ok this is tough!
- You need to shift your eCommerce Platform!
- You need to change your domain name (removing hyphen is same is changing to new domain)
If you are going to take all the two major changes on the blog so there is only one thing which is important and should be considered that is redirection. Domain level redirection from old domain to the new domain plus URL level redirection as this will help you save the rankings and traffic from inner pages (categories and products) that are ranking well in search engines like Google.
Do check that your next ecommerce platform should have all the SEO friendly plug-ins available or else you might see a dip in traffic, rankings and sales instead of improvements.
Also, you need to recheck your robots.txt to see if there is anything else which is going to affect your new domain and URL structure... at the same time update your sitemap xml accordingly.
There are many thing that can be witness after the deep analysis of the website but here are the basics that you should consider as most important.
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
-
Google Search Console 'Change of Address' Just 301s on source domain?
Hi all. New here, so please be gentle. 🙂 I've developed a new site, where my client also wanted to rebrand from .co.nz to .nz On the source (co.nz) domain, I've setup a load of 301 redirects to the relevant new page on the new domain (the URL structure is changing as well).
Technical SEO | | WebGuyNZ
E.G. On the old domain: https://www.mysite.co.nz/myonlinestore/t-shirt.html
In the HTACCESS on the old/source domain, I've setup 301's (using RewriteRule).
So that when **https://www.mysite.co.nz/**myonlinestore/t-shirt.html is accessed, it does a 301 to;
https://mysite.nz/shop/clothes/t-shirt All these 301's are working fine. I've checked in dev tools and a 301 is being returned. My question is, is having the 301's just on the source domain only enough, in regards to starting a 'Change of Address' in Google's Search Console? Their wording indicates it's enough but I'm concerned, maybe I also need redirects on the target domain as well? I.E. Does the Search Console Change of Address process work this way?
It looks at the source domain URL (that's already in Google's index), sees the 301 then updates the index (and hopefully pass the link juice) to the new URL. Also, I've setup both source and target Search Console properties as Domain Properties. Does that mean I no longer need to specify that the source and target properties are HTTP or HTTPS? I couldn't see that option when I created the properties. Thanks!0 -
Domain prefix changed, will this impact SEO?
Our web development team have changed our domain prefix from www to non www due to a server change. Our SSL certificate would not be recognised under www and would produce a substantial error message when visiting the secure parts of our website. To prevent issues with old links they have added a permanent 301 redirect from www. to non www. urls until our sitemap catches up. Would this impact our SEO efforts or would it have no impact as a redirect has been placed? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Jseddon920 -
Parked Domains
I have a client who has a somewhat odd situation for their domains. They've been really inconsistent with how they've used them over the years, which makes for a slightly sticky situation. The client has two domains: compname.com and fullcompanyname.com. Right now, their website is just HTML (no CMS) and all of the URLs are relative, so both domains work. Since the new website will be in WordPress, they need to commit to one domain as the primary. Right now, it looks like compname.com is the one they've used the most in ads and such, so I'm going to recommend they go with that. However, the client has also used fullcompanyname.com a lot. They don't want to have to setup individual 301 redirects for everything. I think it's ridiculous, but you can lead a horse to water... Our developer has done some research and he may have found a solution that will satisfy the client. I just want to find out if there are any SEO implications. The possible plan is to us compname.com as the primary domain and to park fullcompanyname.com. That way, if someone visits fullcompanyname.com/products/my-favorite-product, it will still work without having to setup 301 redirects. Since the domain is parked, Google won't recognize it as duplicate content, correct? Just to be clear on the whole situation, I'm insisting that all of the website URLs need 301 redirects, regardless of the domain. The primary concern is with a lot of other stuff on the server that isn't related to the site (email campaign landing pages, image files, assets that are pulled in by the client's software, etc.). The client's concern is about redirecting all that other stuff (and there is a lot of it--thousands of files). The parked domain would seem to fix that, but I want to make sure that the client won't get Google slapped.
Technical SEO | | BopDesign0 -
PR 6 Redirect to a brand new domain name
Hello all, I checked a lot fo blog posts about 301 redirects but wanted to double check with you all. I got an email from a potential client who want to do a re-brand of his business and decided to buy a new domain name.
Technical SEO | | artdivision
His old domain name is PR 6 and his new domain obviously PR 0. I tried to check his old web site but it is too late as he has redirected everything to the new one. What it seems he has done though is redirect everything from his old domain (whether it is a sub category link, a blog link or a specific product) to the new domain index page. So for example if someone linked to his old product page www.xxxxxx.com/product/product_1 or his blog post www.xxxxxx.com/blog/11-21-2013/xxxxxxxxx.com in both cases it will take em to the new domain index page www.xxxxxx.com as he has not created product pages, blogs or anything than just a 4 page web site. I know that ideally he should have created same folders/subfolders, get his blog posts up and set up proper re-directs to the new pages but as I was not in charge of this process nor know if he has kept the old web site yet I wanted to know how bad is this for SEO and if his old PR 6 will pass value to his new domain. Yiannis0 -
Setting up addon domains properly (bonus duplicate content issue inside)
A new client of mine is using 1and1 hosting from back in the dark ages. Turns out, her primary domain and her main website (different domain) are exactly the same. She likes to have the domains names of her books, but her intention is to have it redirect to her main site. Unfortunately, 1and1's control panel is light years behind cpanel, so when she set up her new domains it just pointed everything to the same directory. I just want to make sure I don't make this up, so please correct me if I'm wrong about something. I'm assuming this is a major duplicate content deal, so I plan to create a new directory for each add-on domain. Since her main site is an add-on itself, I'll have to move all the files into it's new home directory. Then I'll create an htaccess file for each domain and redirect it to her main site. Right so far? My major concern is with the duplicate content. She's had two sites being exactly the same for years. Will there be any issues leftover after I set everything up properly? Is there anything else I need to do? Thanks for the help guys! I'm fairly new to this community and love the opportunity to learn from the best!
Technical SEO | | Mattymar0 -
Targeting by IP Address... SEO Issues?
I'm setting up a site to display a different site header graphic depending on which U.S. State the IP address is coming from. In theory we may end up doing 50 different images, although we'll probably start with 4 or 5 and then the other states will get a "default". How will the SE's treat this... if it's just an image change, but the text on the page is the same, will it affect anything? Any best practice advice out there? thanks!
Technical SEO | | JMagary0 -
Questionable SEO
Chess Telecom appears first when you search for 'business phone lines' in the UK so I used a campaign to check them out. It seems they've got tons of unrelated links and using comment spamming to increase their ranking. Along with fake twitter accounts and other things. Search for 'jewel jubic chess' and you'll see what i mean. I assumed this wasnt a good idea and been trying to get my link on relevant websites only. Any comments or suggestions? Should I simply trust that google will hopefully punish them eventually? Or should I be fighting fire with fire? Thanks Dan
Technical SEO | | DanFromUK0 -
Issue with .uk.com domain
hi i have rockshore.uk.com which is not indexing properly. the internal pages do not show up for the text they have on them, or the title tags. the site is on aekmps shops platform. I understand that a .uk.com is not a proper TLD but i think i have a subdomain of .uk.com Can anyone help? thanks
Technical SEO | | Turkey0