On Page vs Off Page - Which Has a Greater Effect on Rankings?
-
Hi Mozzers,
My site will be migrating to a new domain soon, and I am not sure how to spend my time.
Should I be optimizing our content for keywords, improving internal linking, and writing new content - or should I be doing link building for our current domain (or the new one)?
Is there a certain ratio that determines rankings which can help me prioritize these to-dos?, such as 70:30 in favor of link-building?
Thanks for any help you can offer!
-
Let's deal with 2nd question first re changing 301s. As I mentioned in your more recent question, the solution is to go back to the original redirect and rewrite it to go to the new correct location.
As long as you still control the original redirects, (which is why you'll want to maintain your old domain for at least 180 days, preferably permanently) there's almost never a reason to chain redirects together like that. Always better to rewrite the original to the new location. In addition to a number of technical benefits, it makes those redirects VASTLY easier to maintain.
As for a solid redirect plan - yes at its most basic it's a matter of ensuring you've catalogued ALL the old pages and written good redirects to the new pages. But there's plenty more to do if you want the transition to go really smoothly!
For example - as in the info above, you'll also want to check the old site for existing redirects and make sure they get included and rewritten as one-hop redirects to the new page.
Perfect example of this: original site had several vanity short URLS redirecting to landing pages. E.g. www.site.com/sale was redirected to www.site.com/category/colour/somereallylongurl
You not only want to redirect the /somreallylongurl page to it's new equivalent, you need to make sure you've also changed the /sale redirect to point directly to the new page as well (not having to go through /somereallylonurl to get there). Really look for these - there are often more of them than you think.
You'll want a quality assurance plan in place to test as many of the redirects as possible just as soon as the new site is live. One misplaced or forgotten "?" in a RegEx can completely foul things up. This is a daunting task, but it's essential to catch as many mistakes as possible before the search crawlers index the goofs (or your users run into them!). You'll probably want to divide this task amongst a group of testers. Watch especially for whether redirects resolve whether the address of a page ends with a "/" or not.
You'll also want a solid plan for how to ensure the search engines find and index those redirects and the new pages quickly. This is sometimes done by placing the old sitemap on the new site for at least a few days so that the search engine spiders are forced through the redirects for all the pages. Not everyone agrees with this approach, so you may want to research it further.
Here are several additional things you will absolutely need to do in Webmaster Tools.
- As soon as the new site is live, set up and verify a new Webmaster Tools account for Bing and Google. (You can even do this in advance using DNS verification method or if there's a placeholder page live at the new URL before the move)
- As soon as the new site is live, use the Change of Address tool in Google Webmaster Tools to point to the new domain.
- Use the "Fetch as Google" in Google Webmaster Tools to find and submit a series of pages in different sections of the new site. This step helps the engines find and start indexing your new pages faster. Note that in Google, you'll want to request "Submit URL and linked pages". You can do 10 of these a month, so pick pages from different sections of your site for best effect.
- Use the "Fetch as Bingbot" in Bing Webmaster Tools to to do the same thing you did in GWT above. Bing allows you to do 10 of these per day. and a total of 50/month. Use all of them, again from different sections of your site.
You'll also want to make certain you have an effective robots.txt file in place to ensure the search engine crawlers aren't wasting their crawl budget on useless pages.
Here's something else to think about. Can you get the owners of the sites that are giving you your most valuable incoming links to update their links to point directly to the new equivalent URLs? Doing this for even 10% of your top links has multiple benefits. The engines will find your new pages faster via the authoritative links, and those links won't lose any "juice" by having to pass through a 301.
As mentioned in my first reply, now would also be a really good time to get a few new links to the new site from some strong external pages.
You also need a solid plan for what tools you will use to monitor for missing/broken redirects and how you'll fix them quickly.
- Webmaster tools to watch for new 404s from incoming links
- Google Analytics (Make damn sure you have your tracking code included on your 404 page - many sites miss this so don't even see all the 404 hits).
- Open Site Explorer as a backup to Webmaster Tools for spotting broken incoming links
- Screaming Frog for an internal link scan to make sure you didn't create or inherit any broken links yourself accidentally
- When will you scan?
- Who will rewrite the .htaccess if fixes needed? (You don't want multiple people in there messing about).
- Who's responsible for updating the sitemap.xml file to the new one after a couple of days and resubmitting it to Google and Bing Webmaster Tools?
- Who will check GWT's Sitemap Details page to ensure the majority of the site is getting crawled and indexed, and will know what to do if it's not?
- Who will follow up with a search of the engines in several months to see if any of your old site URLs are still indexed and insure redirects are in placer for them as well?
The whole point to all these steps is to use every method at your disposal to insure both Google and Bing fully understand the relationship between the old & new site, and to push them to transfer the old site's authority, rankings and traffic to the new site as quickly and efficiently as possible. And even though Bing may send less traffic, you still can't afford to throw it away, so you'll need to monitor it's own Webmaster Tools as well as Google's.
Wow - I know that's a helluva load to think about so be sure to ask if there's stuff I haven't made clear enough.
Paul
P.S. The last thing is to accept that things will likely be a wild ride in the SERPs and traffic for at least two to three weeks after the move. Don't be tempted to overreact and start making large changes too soon if things look wonky at first. The only exception is 404s - fix those as soon as you detect them.
-
Everything makes sense up until you got to the ROCK-SOLID plan.
Shouldn't I just redirect all the pages to their matching page on the new domain?
For example siteA.com/article3 --> siteB.com/article3We may be removing pages, in which case I will either redirect them to the closest relevant page or the home page. Sound like a solid plan?
Also, one question about 301 redirecting.
Say I redirect siteA.com/article3 --> siteB.com/article3 with a 301 redirect,
and I realize I made a mistake and need to redirect it again to another page
siteB.com/article3 --> siteB.com/article4Do I lose another ~10% of link juice, or is it just considered a single redirect from
siteA.com/article3 --> siteB.com/article4 ?This question does not necessarily apply to just between domains, but 301 redirecting in general.
-
I agree with William. Offsite is the single most powerful aspect of your SEO, but it is just one part, and shouldn't be your sole focus.
I would prioritize like this initially:
1. Optimize current pages
2. Fix errors (404's, etc)
Then cycle through these:
3. Write New Content
4. Internal Link Building
5. External Link Building
So, you do the initial set up of your website, then go through the process of creating content, and building links. How you do the second part is really up to you.
- You could write the content first, and then try find links.
or
- You could find content that needs to be wrote, write it, then contact those people with insufficient information to link to you.
Either way the content is the medium you need in order to be most efficient at link building.
-
Here's how I look at it, Zora:
- On-page optimisation is now simply the price of admission. If you want to play effectively in search, good on-page is the foundation of everything else you're going to do. If you've got inadequate on-page optimisation, you're going to automatically compromise the effectiveness of all the off-page work you're doing.
- For example, good links to a page with confusing meta-data and poorly organised content are not going to bring much value. Plus they'll be a LOT harder to get in the first place.
- Really strong, high-quality, useful content will make it MUCH easier to attract links, whether naturally or through link building.
- 301 redirecting is considered to never pass quite as much "link juice" as a native link pointing directly to the landing page
With these things taken into account, my workflow in your situation would be
- to ensure the on-page optimisation for the new pages on new site is as strong as you can make it
- take time to research and write new, strong, linkworthy content for the new site
- do some solid advance planning and have an outreach plan ready to start trying to attract links to the new content as soon as the new site is up.
- any time left over, pre-plan further off-site link attraction strategies for the new site.
All this assumes you have an absolutely ROCK-SOLID plan for redirecting the URLs from the existing site to the new site, and a foolproof, tested implementation plan for those redirects (plus a solid strategy for monitoring and adjusting them instantly should any issues be discovered).
Does that make sense?
Paul
- On-page optimisation is now simply the price of admission. If you want to play effectively in search, good on-page is the foundation of everything else you're going to do. If you've got inadequate on-page optimisation, you're going to automatically compromise the effectiveness of all the off-page work you're doing.
-
Off-page optimization is more difficult hence it is much more powerful in rankings.
On-page SEO should always be the first thing you do because you can control it and easily fix and adjust everything. Off-page is more difficult since it requires partnerships and PR, which of course you can't control that easily.
-
Hi Zora,
My thoughts are that it really depends on the competition in your niche. If it is not very competitive then just the on site optimization itself should bring you good results. (quality , optimized content being key). If ,on the other hand, there is a lot of competition for the keywords that you are trying to rank for , you will have to do the whole bit (on site and off site) to get traction.
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
-
Weird Indexing Issues with the Pages and Rankings
When I found the my page was non-existent on the search results page, I requested Google to index my page via the Search Console. And then just a few minutes after I did that, that page rose to top 3 ranking on the search page (with the same keyword and browser search). It happens to most of the pages on my website. Maybe a week later the rankings sank again, and I had to do the process again to make my pages to the top. Any reasons to explain this phenomenon, and how I can fix this issue? Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrmrsteven0 -
Blog page and homepage ranking next to each other for same keyword
Hello, I have my homepage that has been existing for 10 years that is ranked in 18 th position on google for the keyword luxury bike tours. This homepage doesn't have any external link or internal links saying luxury bike tours and nowhere in the title or on the page do I have the word luxury. I only have the words bike and tours. I created a blog page 24 hours ago that has the word luxury, bike and tours in the title and it is ranked in 19 th position just behind my homepage. I am wondering how it can be there and my homepage just be one spot above with all the history and linking it has ? Is it due to the fact that I have the word luxury in the title ? Is it just because my internal linking structure is correct and this blog page is brand new and will my homepage rank higher in the near future but see that I just redid the structure I need to wait a few months ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Tidied up site by getting rid of bad pages and now rankings tanked. - Please help
Hello Mozzers. We historically had Location specific landing pages on our eCommerce site. examples - site.co.ukj/cleaning-enquipment-london site.co.ukj/cleaning-enquipment-Manchester These all had unique content(600 words approx) and ranked in top 10 for many cities. I understand these would have been classed as doorway pages so we got rid of them (301'd back to the category pages) and now our rankings for these terms have tanked. We also have specific branch pages but we have kept these like many other companies with multiple branches do. It feels like by doing a good thing and tidying up everything , we are actually making our site worse. Everything else seems to be in place. Loads of new regular content , clean profile , mobile friendly, lots of citations etc etc. Any idea what could be going on here. Here's a link in our site - http://goo.gl/0yjSd8 thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Domain remains the same IP address is changing on same server only last 3 digits changing. Will this effect rankings
Dear All, We have taken and a product called webacelator from our hosting UKfast and our ip address is changing. UKFasts asked to point DNS to different IP in order to route the traffic through webacelator, which will enhance browsing speed. I am concerned, will this change effect our rankings. Your responses highly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tigersohelll0 -
Can someone help me understand why this page is ranking so well?
Hi everyone, EDIT: I'm going to link to the actual page, please remove if there are any issues with confidentiality. Here is the page: https://www.legalzoom.com/knowledge/llc/topic/advantages-and-disadvantages-overview It's ranking #2 on Google for "LLC" This page is a couple months old and is substantially heavy in content, but not much more so than all the dozens of other pages online that are competing with it. This is a highly competitive industry and this particular domain is an extremely huge player in this industry. This new page is suddenly ranking #2 for an extremely competitive head term, arguably the most important/high volume keyword being targeted by the entire site. The page is outranking the home page, as well as the service page that exactly targets the query - the one that you would think would be the ranking page for this head term. However, this new page is somewhat of a spin-off with some additional related content about the subject, some videos, resources, a lot of internal links, etc. The first word of the title tag exactly matches the head term. I did observe that almost no other pages on the site have the exact keyword as the first word of the title tag, but that couldn't be sufficient to bring it up so high in the ranks, could it? Another bizarre thing that is happening is that Google is ignoring the Title Tag in the actual HTML (which is a specific question that is accurate to the content on the page), and re-assigning a title tag that basically looks like this: "Head Term | Brand." Why would it do this on this page? Doesn't it usually prefer more descriptive title tags? There are no external links coming up on Moz or Majestic pointing to this page. It has just a couple social shares. It's not being linked to from the home page or top nav bar on the main site. Can anyone explain how this particular page would outrank the main service page targeting this keyword, as well as other highly authoritative, older pages online targeting the same keyword? Thanks for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FPD_NYC1 -
3 Pages Ranking Beside Each Other | How do I consolidate so one ranks better?
An ecommerce website I own called backyardGamez.com sells outdoor games, for example cornhole boards, bags, etc. One such product is a cornhole board carrying case. If you search the above phrase, my site has three pages that rank on the first page. The term isn't high volume, so I'm assuming that is part of the reason. Is this a good, normal thing or does this mean I have inadvertently broken up my ranking power from one powerful page to 3 OK pages? Does anyone know how I can take two of these pages and use them to make the 3rd page more powerful? For example, I would prefer 1 page ranks higher on page 1 in the serps and the other two fall a bit from supporting the other. Thanks, Adam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Soft-Lite0 -
Urgent Site Migration Help: 301 redirect from legacy to new if legacy pages are NOT indexed but have links and domain/page authority of 50+?
Sorry for the long title, but that's the whole question. Notes: New site is on same domain but URLs will change because URL structure was horrible Old site has awful SEO. Like real bad. Canonical tags point to dev. subdomain (which is still accessible and has robots.txt, so the end result is old site IS NOT INDEXED by Google) Old site has links and domain/page authority north of 50. I suspect some shady links but there have to be good links as well My guess is that since that are likely incoming links that are legitimate, I should still attempt to use 301s to the versions of the pages on the new site (note: the content on the new site will be different, but in general it'll be about the same thing as the old page, just much improved and more relevant). So yeah, I guess that's it. Even thought the old site's pages are not indexed, if the new site is set up properly, the 301s won't pass along the 'non-indexed' status, correct? Thanks in advance for any quick answers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JDMcNamara0 -
Blocking Pages Via Robots, Can Images On Those Pages Be Included In Image Search
Hi! I have pages within my forum where visitors can upload photos. When they upload photos they provide a simple statement about the photo but no real information about the image,definitely not enough for the page to be deemed worthy of being indexed. The industry however is one that really leans on images and having the images in Google Image search is important to us. The url structure is like such: domain.com/community/photos/~username~/picture111111.aspx I wish to block the whole folder from Googlebot to prevent these low quality pages from being added to Google's main SERP results. This would be something like this: User-agent: googlebot Disallow: /community/photos/ Can I disallow Googlebot specifically rather than just using User-agent: * which would then allow googlebot-image to pick up the photos? I plan on configuring a way to add meaningful alt attributes and image names to assist in visibility, but the actual act of blocking the pages and getting the images picked up... Is this possible? Thanks! Leona
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HD_Leona0