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
-
What is the best SEO way to categorize products on an ecommerce site
What is the best way for SEO to set up categories for an ecommerce site selling beauty products. I have currently built my product categories so that if a person looks under the hydration category they find our body lotion, but also if they look under the body section of products they also will find the same body lotion. Is this a problem for SEO? I think it helps the customer find the product.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kuhliff0 -
Is it bad for SEO to have a page that is not linked to anywhere on your site?
Hi, We had a content manager request to delete a page from our site. Looking at the traffic to the page, I noticed there were a lot of inbound links from credible sites. Rather than deleting the page, we simply removed it from the navigation, so that a user could still access the page by clicking on a link to it from an external site. Questions: Is it bad for SEO to have a page that is not directly accessible from your site? If no: do we keep this page in our Sitemap, or remove it? If yes: what is a better strategy to ensure the inbound links aren't considered "broken links" and also to minimize any negative impact to our SEO? Should we delete the page and 301 redirect users to the parent page for the page we had previously hidden?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jnew9290 -
Does it hurt your SEO to have an inaccessible directory in your site structure?
Due to CMS constraints, there may be some nodes in our site tree that are inaccessible and will automatically redirect to their parent folder. Here's an example: www.site.com/folder1/folder2/content, /folder2 redirects to /folder1. This would only be for the single URL itself, not the subpages (i.e. /folder1/folder2/content and anything below that would be accessible). Is there any real risk in this approach from a technical SEO perspective? I'm thinking this is likely a non-issue but I'm hoping someone with more experience can confirm. Another potential option is to have /folder2 accessible (it would be 100% identical to /folder1, long story) and use a canonical tag to point back to /folder1. I'm still waiting to hear if this is possible. Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | digitalcrc0 -
Changing my pages URL name - HELP NEEDED FAST
Hello, I need to change the URL name for a few pages on my site. The site was launched just recently, so it has no obvious ranking and traffic. My question is, what is the best practice for changing/deleting the page name? after deleting the page, should I go to Google webmaster tool and use URL Removal and remove the old page? I know that I have to also create a new XML sitemap file, but not sure about the old pages in google search result Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mdmoz0 -
WIX? How to change URLS and is it any good for SEO
I have Wix website and want to change its url structure, but not able to do so, any one know how to do so?. Does below URLs work for SEO? And Is Wix is good for SEO or not? abc.com/#!how-it-works/c46c abc.com/#!party-event/c1lzb
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Dan_Brown10 -
Help with new site revamp SEO LOST!!!
I decided to go fully WP on my band agency website to help with SEO. I have lost loads of rankings even though we redirected old pages to the new urls. it means i am loosing lots of business atm so I am desperate to find out what I thought was a better SEO design than before. We target geographical and genres in search and they have turned to poop too! Would anyone advise me what I have done wrong and if I need to create some more sales pages to help? site is http://www.themorrisagency.co.uk Thank you, thank you in advance guys... Daniel Morris http://www.themorrisagency.co.uk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Agentmorris0 -
Ecommerce SEO URL Structure Questions
| I am in the process of developing a new Magento ecommerce store. Take for instance this website is in the apparel industry and i have the following main categories. Clothing Shoes Accessories Beauty Sub categories for clothing would be: Dresses Pants jeans Tops Products would be: Kelly Maxi dresses What is the best SEO Structure for this? Main categories obviously: www.example.com/clothing Sub Categories:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WayneRooney
www.example.com/clothing/dresses Or www.example.com/dresses (Zappos seem to pursue the second type) Products:
www.example.com/clothing/dresses/kelly-maxi-dresses/ Or www.example.com/kelly-maxi-dresses ? Which one would be the best way to structure your site? Also what about filters that available in category pages? Say if i were to filter by color. what would be the best URL? I am sure canonical tag is needed here. New to Ecommerce SEO so i need some guidance! |0 -
Code to change country in URL for locale results
How do I change the code in my URL to search in Google by specific location?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0