What do I do with an old site when a new one is built?
-
I have a customer that has a PR 4 website with over 3000 pages of content. He decided to build a brand new website with a new domain and it now has a PR of 2. Our question is, what do we do with the old site? Do we migrate all the content over to the new site and do redirects on all the pages? Do we keep the old site up and put links over to the new site? He was just planning on shutting it down but that seemed like a complete waste of PR and SEO. What is his best course of action? Thanks for your replies.
-
You should also set up Google Webmaster Tools for your old and new domains and then tell Google about your change of address. Log-in then go to Configuration>Change of Address
And here is some other information from Google that is useful to follow https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=83105
-
I agree 100% with your answer, checking where most of your backlinks are coming from is very important and changing them to your new website shouldn't be a problem; as well as do look at the deep links and redirect them to the new website as well.
-
Move whatever content makes sense and do 301 redirects. If there's no reason for that content to be there and if it's not bringing in any traffic, or if it is, either wya, it makes complete sense to move/migrate content that's relevant and then do 301's. Make sure you check where most of your backlinks are coming from and if you can get any of those links changed to the new website. I would also check for deep links to the old site and make sure, whatever URL those deep links were going to, are redirected to the new page on the new site. I hope this helps.
-
Hi. I am not a developer, so I can't give you an in-depth answer except to say that you absolutely must implement 301 redirects from your old pages to new in order to maintain your link equity from the old site. If you need more information on how to do this, let me know and I can get the required info.
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
-
Old Blogs
We have several blogs on our site for a range of products we no longer stock. Would you set up a redirect for these - and how long would you keep it in place?
Technical SEO | | Caroline_Ardmoor0 -
Canconical tag on site with multiple URL links but only one set of pages
We have a site www.mezfloor.com which has a number of Url's pointing at one site. As the url's have been in use for many years there are links from many sources include good old fashioned hard copy advertising. We have now decided that it would be better to try to start porting all sources to the .co.uk version and get that listing as the prime/master site. A couple of days ago I went through and used canonical tags on all the pages thinking that would set the priority and that would also strengthen the page in terms of trust due to the reduced duplication. However when I went to scan the site in MOZ the warning that the page redirects came up and I am beginning to think that I need to remove all these canonical tags so that search engines do not get into a confused spiral where we loose the little page rank we have. Is there a way that I can redirect everything except the target URL without setting up a separate master site just for all the other pages to point at.
Technical SEO | | Eff-Commerce0 -
Site Navigation
Hello, I have some questions about best practices with site navigation & internal linking. I'm currently assisting aplossoftware.com with its navigation. The site has about 200 pages total. They currently have a very sparse header with a lot of links in the footer. The three most important keywords they want to rank for are nonprofit accounting software, church accounting software and file 990 online. 1. What are your thoughts about including a drop down menu in the header for the different products? (they have 3 main products). This would allow us to include a few more links in the header and give more real estate to include full keywords in anchor text. 2. They have a good blog with content that gets regularly updated. Currently it's linked in the footer and gets a tiny amount of visits. What are your thoughts about including it as a link in the header instead? 3. What are best practices with using (or not using) no follow with site navigation and footer links? How about with links to social media pages like Facebook/Twitter? Any other thoughts/ideas about the site navigation for this site (www.aplossoftware.com) would be much appreciated. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | stageagent0 -
Mobile site ranking instead of/as well as desktop site in desktop SERPS
I have just noticed that the mobile version of my site is sometimes ranking in the desktop serps either instead of as well as the desktop site. It is not something that I have noticed in the past as it doesn't happen with the keywords that I track, which are highly competitive. It is happening for results that include our brand name, e.g '[brand name][search term]'. The mobile site is served with mobile optimised content from another URL. e.g wwww.domain.com/productpage redirects to m.domain.com/productpage for mobile. Sometimes I am only seen the mobile URL in the desktop SERPS, other times I am seeing both the desktop and mobile URL for the same product. My understanding is that the mobile URL should not be ranking at all in desktop SERPS, could we be being penalised for either bad redirects or duplicate content? Any ideas as to how I could further diagnose and solve the problem if you do believe that it could be harming rankings?
Technical SEO | | pugh0 -
New domain's Sitemap.xml file loaded to old domain - how does this effect SEO?
I have a client who recently changed their domain when they redesigned their site. The client wanted the old site to remain live for existing customers with links to the new domain. I guess as a workaround, the developer loaded the new domain's sitemap.xml file to the old domain. What SEO ramifications would this have if any on the primary (new) domain?
Technical SEO | | julesae0 -
What is better for SEO, keeping a current blog or creating a new one?
We are working with a client to build a new website. They are asking if we should keep their existing blog or create a new one. If they keep the current blog, should we move it so we can incorporate it into their new site or keep it as a separate URL? Or, should we build the new site into the current blog––they are using Wordpress, so we would be able to build out the blog to incorporate the new website.
Technical SEO | | thinkcreativegroup0 -
Site Map
For a long time our site map used to be http://www.efurniturehouse.com/sitemap.xml recently our hosting company changed the site map to: http://www.efurniturehouse.com/xml-sitemap.ashx I went ahead and submitted the new site maps to both Google Webmaster and Bing. I submitted the Google one on Monday and it states PENDING. ( A day later this pending) I just submitted the map to Bing. I now have 2 site maps on each. 1)Is having 2 a problem Will they ignore the old site map or can we delete and if so when can we delete I appreciate your input Regards Tony www.eFurnitureHouse.com
Technical SEO | | OCFurniture0 -
If a permanent redirect is supposed to transfer SEO from the old page to the new page, why has my domain authority been impacted?
For example, we redirected our old domain to a new one (leaving no duplicate content on the old domain) and saw a 40% decrease in domain authority. Isn't a permanent redirect supposed to transfer link authority to the place it is redirecting to? Did I do something wrong?
Technical SEO | | BlueLinkERP0