Large Site SEO - Dev Issue Forcing URL Change - 301, 302, Block, What To Do?
-
Hola,
Thanks in advance for reading and trying to help me out. A client of mine recently created a large scale company directory (500k+ pages) in Drupal v6 while the "marketing" type pages of their site was still in manual hard-coded HTML. They redesigned their "marketing" pages, but used Drual v7. They're now experiencing server conflicts with both instances of Drupal not allowing them to communicate/be on the same server. Eventually the directory will be upgraded to Drupal v7, but could take weeks to months the client does not want to wait for the re-launch. The client wants to push the new marketing site live, but also does not want to ruin the overall SEO value of the directory and have a few options, but I'm looking to help guide them down the path of least resistance:
- Option 1: Move the company directory onto a subdomain and the "marketing site" on the www. subdomain. Client gets to push their redesign live, but large scale 301s to the directory cause major issues in terms of shaking up the structure of the site causing ripple effects into getting pulled out of the index for days to weeks. Rankings and traffic drop, subdomain authority gets lost and the company directory health looks bad for weeks to months. However, 301 maintains partial SEO value and some long tail traffic still exists. Once the directory gets moved to Drupal v7, the directory will then cancel the 301 to the subdomain and revert back to original www. subdomain URLs
- Option 2: Block the company directory from search engines with robots.txt and meta instructions, essentially cutting off the floodgates from the established marketing pages. No major scaling 301 ripple effect, directory takes a few weeks to filter out of the index, traffic is completely lost, however once drupal v7 gets upgraded and the directory is then re-opened, directory will then slowly gain back SEO value to get close to old rankings, traffic, etc.
- Option 3: 302 redirect? Lose all accumulate SEO value temporarily... hmm
- Option 4: Something else?
As you can see, this is not an ideal situation. However, a decision has to be made and I'm looking to chose the lesser of evils. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks again
-Chris
-
I would heartily agree with this. The workaround is going to be a nightmare and may cause him a lot more pain.
-
I don't envy your situation.
I think that I might try another phone call to the client advising that a two week (or whatever) delay is in the best interest of his business.....
.... I would be willing to risk his temper than do something that I don't recommend. Lots of clients would cuss you now but thank you down the road.
... just saying what I would do.. not trying to argue.
-
Thanks for the ideas.
I'm really looking for an option if upgrading Drupal on either the marketing site or directory is NOT an option. What is the best temporary solution that will cause the fewest major short and long term problems.
-
As I see it they have three options:
1. Upgrade the directory to D7 fast! If there aren't a lot of custom modules this shouldn't be a huge deal, no matter the number of nodes. As long as everything is disabled the upgrade isn't a seriously big deal.
2. If upgrading is really a big issue due to a lot of custom coding, then perhaps downgrade the marketing site to D6 if there aren't tons of pages?
3. I would suggest a combination of both - upgrade the directory to D7 and merge both sites into one D7 install - no sense running two installs when one would do just fine.
-
As an SEO, I agree with you.
Unfortunately, as a consultant I need to provide an answer as changes are going to be made regardless. My job is to pick the "lesser of two evils" decision as to how best preserve the SEO value. Any help there?
-
Thanks... that is nice traffic...
So, if this was my site I would tell the dev guys that we need the version conflicts solved ASAP.
I would not move the directory or the marketing pages.
I would put pressure on the dev guys and not allow impatience to compromise the long-term success of the site.
-
The directory is getting well over 200k visits per month and is majorly competitive for a number of mid to long tail terms.
-
Is the directory getting any traffic from any search engine?
Has the directory gotten any valuable links that were not created by you?
If the answer to those questions is "no" or "very little" then I'd say that it has very little SEO value and could be a weight on the rest of the site.
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
-
301 vs Canonical - With A Side of Partial URL Rewrite and Google URL Parameters-OH MY
Hi Everyone, I am in the middle of an SEO contract with a site that is partially HTML pages and the rest are PHP and part of an ecommerce system for digital delivery of college classes. I am working with a web developer that has worked with this site for many years. In the php pages, there are also 6 different parameters that are currently filtered by Google URL parameters in the old Google Search Console. When I came on board, part of the site was https and the remainder was not. Our first project was to move completely to https and it went well. 301 redirects were already in place from a few legacy sites they owned so the developer expanded the 301 redirects to move everything to https. Among those legacy sites is an old site that we don't want visible, but it is extensively linked to the new site and some of our top keywords are branded keywords that originated with that site. Developer says old site can go away, but people searching for it are still prevalent in search. Biggest part of this project is now to rewrite the dynamic urls of the product pages and the entry pages to the class pages. We attempted to use 301 redirects to redirect to the new url and prevent the draining of link juice. In the end, according to the developer, it just isn't going to be possible without losing all the existing link juice. So its lose all the link juice at once (a scary thought) or try canonicals. I am told canonicals would work - and we can switch to that. My questions are the following: 1. Does anyone know of a way that might make the 301's work with the URL rewrite? 2. With canonicals and Google parameters, are we safe to delete the parameters after we have ensures everything has a canonical url (parameter pages included)? 3. If we continue forward with 301's and lose all the existing links, since this only half of the pages in the site (if you don't count the parameter pages) and there are only a few links per page if that, how much of an impact would it have on the site and how can I avoid that impact? 4. Canonicals seem to be recommended heavily these days, would the canonical urls be a better way to go than sticking with 301's. Thank you all in advance for helping! I sincerely appreciate any insight you might have. Sue (aka Trudy)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TStorm1 -
Is it bad I have a cluster of canonical urls that 301 re-direct?
Just went through a migration. We have a group of canonical URLs that are NOT the preferred url, but 301 re-direct to the preferred URL. Does this essentially "break even" and the incorrect canonical URL becomes obsolete? And/or would this be considered potentially bad and confusing for bots?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lunavista-comm0 -
How to make sure dev site is not index in wordpress and how would it be affected?
hi guys! I'm currently having a dev version of my site (dev.website.com) that once everything is done i would move the dev to the public domain (website.com). But since is a total duplicate content of my real site would it affect the seo? if so, i tried setting the reading privacy in wordpress so google would not index it but im afraid when i live it in the future and revert the setting back to normal it would affect the site seo. any opinion and suggestion on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andrewwatson920 -
One site two languages - what to do with urls?
Hi, We are working with a client who has a Spanish site which is in English and Spanish, what is the best url structure to go for? www.domain.es and en.domain.es or www.domain.es and www.domain.es/en or none of the above?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | J_Sinclair0 -
Getting Rid Of Spammy 301 Links From An Old Site
A relatively new site I'm working on has been hit really hard by Panda, due to over optimization of 301 external links which include exact keyword phrases, from an old site. Prior to the Panda update, all of these 301 redirects worked like a charm, but now all of these 301's from the old url are killing the new site, because all the hyper-text links include exact keyword matches. A couple weeks ago, I took the old site completely down, and removed the htaccess file, removing the 301's and in effect breaking all of these bad links. Consequently, if one were to type this old url, you'd be directed to the domain registrar, and not redirected to the new site. My hope is to eliminate most of the bad links, that are mostly on spammy sites, that aren't worth linking to. My thought is these links would eventually disappear from G. My concern is that this might not work, because G won't re-index these links, because once they're indexed by G, they'll be there forever. My fear is causing me to conclude I should hedge my bets, and just disavow these sites using the disavow tool in WMT. IMO, the disavow tool is an action of last resort, because I don't want to call attention to myself, since this site doesn't have a manual penalty inflected on it. Any opinions or advise would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alrockn0 -
Is it Wortwhile to have a HTML site map for a Large Site
We are a large, enterprise site with many pages (some on our CMS and some old pages that exist outside our CMS). Every month we submit various an XML site map. Some pages on our site can no longer be found via following links from one page to another (orphan pages). Some of those pages are important and some not. Is it worth our while to create a HTML site map? Does any one have any recent stats or blog posts to share, showing how a HTML site map may have benefited a large site. Many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CeeC-Blogger0 -
Best way to SEO crowdsourcing site
What is the best way to SEO a crowdsourcing site? The websites content is entirely propagated by the user
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | StreetwiseReports0 -
Website redesign - how do I avoid screwing up my site SEO?
We are preparing to launch a newly designed (and much improved) website in the next few months. I want to be very careful to ensure we do not mess up any rankings (and hopefully actually improve rankings) when switching over the site. I'm particularly concerned about one key phrase that our homepage currently ranks on. After the redesign it would be more appropriate for our of our subpages to rank for that term, but I'd rather have our homepage rank (less relevant for this keyword than the subpage) then nothing at all. I know about 301 redirects, and we are planning on creating a few comprehensive diagrams to ensure we redirect old pages to the correct new pages. Beyond that, what can I do to preserve our rankings? Thanks! -Ryan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RyanD.0