Best approach to launch a new site with new urls - same domain
-
We have a high volume e-commerce website with over 15K items, an average of 150K visits per day and 12.6 pages per visit. We are launching a new website this spring which is currently on a beta sub domain and we are looking for the best strategy that preserves our current search rankings while throttling traffic (possibly 25% per week) to measure results.
The new site will be soft launched as we plan to slowly migrate traffic to it via a load balancer. This way we can monitor performance of the new site while still having the old site as a backup. Only when we are fully comfortable with the new site will we submit the 301 redirects and migrate everyone over to the new site. We will have a month or so of running both sites.
Except for the homepage the URL structure for the new site is different than the old site.
What is our best strategy so we don’t lose ranking on the old site and start earning ranking on the new site, while avoiding duplicate content and cloaking issues?
Here is what we got back from a Google post which may highlight our concerns better:
Thank You,
sincerely,
Stephan Woo Cude
SEO Specialist
-
Hi there,
I was just reading this old thread to get some info, but I'd love it if you could share you actual results from the launch. What did you do and how much did traffic change? How long before you were back to normal?
I usually find that with a new website and all new URLs, I end up seeing maybe a month or sodip in traffic that can be up to 10%. But that seems to be less and less as time goes on. The search engines are usually on top of it though, they recrawl and recatalog quite quickly.
Would love to hear from you.
Thanks!
Leslie
-
Just to chime in on this, albeit maybe a little late now... I had the same thought as I was reading through this with using rel=canonical to point the old pages to the new for now, so the search engines don't have any duplicate content issues until a 301 redirect can take over when the new site is fully launched.
However, depending on your rollout schedule, this would mean that the SERPs would soon be indexing only the new pages. You'd need to ensure that the traffic diverter you are using would handle this. Otherwise you could put the rel=canonical on the new pages for now, which would avoid the duplicate content until you are fully launched. Then you'd remove it and 301 redirect the old pages to the new.
Just something you maybe want to think about! Hopefully your traffic diverter can handle this though.
-
Thank you very much for the insight!
-
Ah ok. I understand now. I wasn't picking up on what you were saying before.
If with the soft launch you are already putting the "new" version of the site on their intended final URLs then yes, you can let the engines start crawling those URLs. For each new URL you let the search engines crawl make sure to 301 its corresponding old URL (the old site) to the new version to minimize any duplicate content issues.
If for whatever reason you can't quite 301 the old URLs yet (like if you still need instant access to reroute traffic back to them) you could try using rel=canonical on the old pages and point them to their new counter part only if the main content on each of the pages is almost exactly the same. You don't want Google to think you're manipulating them with rel=canonical.
-
Sorry this is so confusing and thank you so much for your responses... there would be no subdomain when we do the soft launch... it would be http://www.sierratradingpost.com/Mens-Clothing.html (old site) vs http://www.sierratradingpost.com/mens-clothing~d~15/ (new site)...
-
As I'd said, there really isn't a reason to let them get a head start. The URL's will be changing when you transition the new site out of the subdomain (ie beta.sierratradingpost.com/mens vs sierratradingpost.com/mens - those are considered 2 completely different URLs) and the engines will have to recrawl all of the new pages at that point anyway.
-
We do plan to do that... it is just since we plan a soft launch we will essentially have 2 sites out there. We are wondering when to remove the noindex from the new site. We will have 2 sites for about a month... should we let the bots crawl the new site (new urls, same domain) only we we take down the old site and have the 301's or let Google crawl earlier to get the new site a head start on indexing.
-
And when you drop the sub domain you definitely want to 301 all of the old site structure's URLs to their corresponding new page's URLs. That way nothing gets lost in the transition.
-
We would drop the subdomain - so we would have 2 "Men's Clothing" department pages - different URLs, slightly different content...
-
Yeah, just refer to our conversation above as I think it will pertain better to your situation.
-
The only issue is that you have to keep in mind that Google/Bing defines pages on the internet through their URL's, not the content. The content only describes the pages.
So if you let the engines pre crawl the pages before dropping the subdomain - simply for the reason of letting them have a "sneak peek" - you won't really be doing yourself much of a favor, as the engines will just be recrawling the content on the non subdomain URL as if it were brand new anyway.
The reason to do it the pre crawl way would be if you're already building back links to the new beta pages. Then it could make sense to let the engines index those pages and 301 them to their new non subdomain versions later. In my opinion the benefit from this route would outweigh any potential duplicate content issues.
-
But the URL structer is different... does that matter?
-
What YesBaby is talking about is somehting like Google's Website Optimizer. When someone goes to sierratradingpost.com/mens-stuff, for example, it will give 50% of the people the old version of the site for that page, and the other 50% the new version. It will eliminate any duplicate content issues as the 2 page variations will still be attached to the same exact URL.
Definitely a viable option if it fits with your game plan of how you want to do things.
-
SInce all of the URLs except for the homepage - what do you think about letting the new site get crawled maybe 2 weeks before it is 100% launched? We would have some duplicate content issues but I am hoping this would give us a head start with the new site.... then when we go 100% we add the 301's and new sitemap. It is my understanding we will be dropping the sub domain for the soft launch.
Thank you so much!
-
First of all - I love the new design. It looks great!
The absolutel best way to go about it in my opinion would be to simply have the new site ready, and then launch it fully under the base domain (no subdomain) while 301 redirecting important old pages on the site to their related new versions. That way the search engine will have the easiest time of discovering the new site and indexing it, while making sure you don't lose anything in the transition via proper 301'ing.
I can't say it would provide you with a massive benefit to set up a way for the search engines to start crawling the new site for now, as you're just going to be moving all of those URL's off of the subdomain in the near future anyway - where they will then need to be recrawled on the parent domain as if they were brand new.
If the traffic diverter you have set up automatically 301's requests for old site pages to their new beta URL version then you might as well let those new versions be indexed for the time being. Just make sure that when you transfer the beta site to the parent domain that you 301 the old beta URL's to their new permanent home.
-
So with the service - the new site is not crawled until we launch it?
-
The new site is beta.sierratradingpost.com where we will be dropping the beta. On the old one has catalog departments... ie Men's Classics, which, at this time, are not being carried over to the new site. I guess we are wonding when we should allow the robots to crawl the new site?
-
Hey Stephan,
I'm assuming you want to measure how the traffic is converting on the new site, hence the strategy to send small portions of traffic to new pages?
If so, the easiest way might to just straight up A/B split test the new pages with a service like Adobe/Omniture Test&Target. This doesn't cause any cloaking/dupe isseues. When you are happy with the results you can realese the site with all the 301's in place.
-
Let me make sure I have this straight... you're not going to be directing the new site format to a subdomain permanently, right? You were only using the sub domain for beta purposes?
The way I see it, when I go to Sierra Trading Post's site now I can make out what looks like 2 different types of architecture structures. You have one link on the page pointing to Men's clothing which executes at a single defined .htm file. Then you can see that you have the "Men's Classics" (still general men's clothing?) which points to a directory which I'm guessing is your new site. Correct me if I'm wrong on this, or if I'm right but have the old vs. new reversed.
If that is the case your best bet to try and minimalize any ranking impact would be to 301 redirect pages from the old catalog architecture to the new. That way you could remove the old site files completely and let the server take care of the direction.
If you need to leave the old site up for throttling purposes like you said - you could use canoniclazation tags to refer the old pages to the new ones. That along with employing 301 tags would help train the search engines into understanding what you're doing.
I'm sorry if I didn't answer your question as you needed. I'm still not sure if I understood your issue as intended. =P
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
-
Possible issues with 301 redirecting to a new domain name
Ive got a current domain and after a bit of a rebrand Im considering 301 rediecting the current site to a newly purchased domain. Id redirect each age to idential pages. Am I likely to see any issues. I know this is the recomended way from Google but just wondering how smoothly it works and whether Im likely to see any ranking drops or other problems?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | paulfoz16090 -
Best practice for disallowing URLS with Robots.txt
Hi Everybody, We are currently trying to tidy up the crawling errors which are appearing when we crawl the site. On first viewing, we were very worried to say the least:17000+. But after looking closer at the report, we found the majority of these errors were being caused by bad URLs featuring: Currency - For example: "directory/currency/switch/currency/GBP/uenc/aHR0cDovL2NlbnR1cnlzYWZldHkuY29tL3dvcmt3ZWFyP3ByaWNlPTUwLSZzdGFuZGFyZHM9NzEx/" Color - For example: ?color=91 Price - For example: "?price=650-700" Order - For example: ?dir=desc&order=most_popular Page - For example: "?p=1&standards=704" Login - For example: "customer/account/login/referer/aHR0cDovL2NlbnR1cnlzYWZldHkuY29tL2NhdGFsb2cvcHJvZHVjdC92aWV3L2lkLzQ1ODczLyNyZXZpZXctZm9ybQ,,/" My question now is as a novice of working with Robots.txt, what would be the best practice for disallowing URLs featuring these from being crawled? Any advice would be appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | centurysafety0 -
How will this affect the rankings and traffic of the new site once this happens?
Hi, we will be moving a clients’ site address from one domain to another and will of course be doing 301 redirects and notifying Google of the site address change in WMT. The problem is, that at some point in the future (say 3-6 months), the old domain will be going live with a new site as the current client does not own the domain and the owner will be wanting it back unfortunately. How will this affect the rankings and traffic of the new site (new domain) once this (old domain with new site) happens? Will the site address change be enough to keep the rankings but it will lose backlink traffic? Or will rankings go down since the 301 redirects will in essence no longer be in affect? Many thanks for your help in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WSIDW0 -
Own Domains shown as Spam Links in Open Site Explorer
Hi ! I have 7 Domains that I bought that point to the same webspace as my main domain. In Open Site Explorer they are showed as spam links. So to solve the issue I redirected the links to an empty subdirectory on the same server which is different from the directory the main domain is linking to. But nevertheless the domains are still showing up as spam. Why might that be? What can I do to get rid of these domains? In fact I only need the main domain. Cheers, Marc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RWW0 -
Move a blog from a domain to a new domain in the same hosting server
I have the need to find the best solution to move my viverezen.org blog on new domain naturazen.org because somebody stolen my brand. Now I registererd brand NaturaZen and I am going to use this website as main and have the old viverezen just to point in the new website I dont want lose autority and more important I dont want lose the 500 visits I have everyday. Both domain are under same hosting company What is best SEO solution you can give me to help? I thought to point the hosting on new domain naturazen and put all link with redirect 301 on viverezen but probably I am wrong stuck_out_tongue thanks for your help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VivereZen0 -
Sub-domain or new domain for new location
I have a small law firm in Dallas, TX. I will be moving to Austin, TX in the next 2 years. My website is doing great here in Dallas, but I have focused on keyword phrases that include the word "Dallas." I would like to leave my current website as is and maintain a Dallas office to keep the business flowing from this website. I am trying to determine the best way to get Austin business from a 2nd website. I know I will need new content that includes the use of the word "Austin". My question is: Should I put the new content on (1) a subdomain (i.e. austin.copplaw.com) or (2) a new domain (i.e. copplawfirm.com). I really want to be a player for the google local search results in both cities. I can use a different name for my law firm in Austin, if necessary. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Regards, Zac
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seozac0 -
URL Structure for Directory Site
We have a directory that we're building and we're not sure if we should try to make each page an extension of the root domain or utilize sub-directories as users narrow down their selection. What is the best practice here for maximizing your SERP authority? Choice #1 - Hyphenated Architecture (no sub-folders): State Page /state/ City Page /city-state/ Business Page /business-city-state/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knowyourbank
4) Location Page /locationname-city-state/ or.... Choice #2 - Using sub-folders on drill down: State Page /state/ City Page /state/city Business Page /state/city/business/
4) Location Page /locationname-city-state/ Again, just to clarify, I need help in determining what the best methodology is for achieving the greatest SEO benefits. Just by looking it would seem that choice #1 would work better because the URL's are very clear and SEF. But, at the same time it may be less intuitive for search. I'm not sure. What do you think?0 -
What are the Best Practices for moving a blog from subdomain to domain/subcategory?
Howdy SEOmoz fans! (couldn't resist). I'm moving a wordpress blog from blog.domain.com to domain.com/blog. Trying to do it right the first time and cover all my bases. Issues I'm trying to handle correctly, in varying degrees of importance: External LInks Internal Links Google Friendly Traffic Routing in a dynamic environment (wordpress, 301, .htaccess, etc.) Thanks so much for any and all input!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NTM1