Effects of a long-term holding page/503 http code whilst site is being rebranded?
-
We have a client who is adamant that during the rebranding of their company and website, a holding page is put in place from August 5<sup>th</sup> till go-live date on August 21<sup>st</sup>.
They don’t look like budging on the matter, therefore we are looking to set up a 503 HTTP code on the holding page to tell Google the site is down for maintenance and redirect all pages back to the holding page.
The general consensus is that implementing this for such a long period of time will see Google de-index all pages and the site will lose masses of traffic as a result for a substantial time afterwards.
It would be great to get some insight on best practice for this situation, how Google will determine the situation and the consequences of such actions.
If you have any case studies of similar situations or have firm knowledge of how this scenario would affect the site, I would be delighted to hear from you!
-
Hi Matt,
Unless I'm misunderstanding you, that sounds like a pretty successful implementation to me - it makes total sense to me that Google would temporarily de-index your site if it was returning a 503; after all, there was nowhere for a user to go. The fact that you've been able to gain back your rankings afterward means that Google understood what was going on and didn't ding you for having a "broken" site, which is what the goal of this process should be.
Perhaps I'm not understanding your goals? If you want the holding/home page to stay indexed, then yes, a 200 response code is what that page should be returning - Google tries not to send traffic to pages consistently returning a 503. In your original question it sounded like you wanted to let Google know that the site was down for maintenance, but would return, in which case a 503 is really your best bet.
-
We found some negative effects of implementing the above, unfortunately.
Our process was:
- Implement the holding page and place a 503 HTTP status into the header for the page, along with a come back later date when the site would be live again.
- 302 every other page to the homepage (holding page).
- The Robots was removed in this process.
- Found that the homepage had been de-indexed - reinstated the Robots file with no disallow restrictions.
- Still couldn't raise the site through branded search terms and returned the homepage back to a 200, indexed the page again in WMT and used social media to boost this process.
- The homepage is now showing where it was before on the first page for branded terms.
We feel we didn't do anything wrong and wondered if anyone had any ideas if there were any errors in our process?
Cheers,
Matt.
-
Hi Ruth,
Thanks for the response. The multiple 302 in combination with a 503 seems like the best way to go. I'll check out the yoast post, hadn't thought about adding a 503 to the robots.txt as well.
Matt
-
Hi Matt,
I think setting up a 503 HTTP code on the holding page and then using 302 redirects to point all pages to that page is a viable option. You could also consider having every page return a 503 error (make sure your robots.txt page does, as that will keep the search engines from continuing to crawl). The pages on the site will most likely fall out of the index while you're returning a 503, but that's OK since there won't be anything for your users to find anyway.
The key here is to add a Retry-After header with the GMT date and time your site will be available. That lets Google know when to come back and that the site isn't actually down/returning a 503 forever. Yoast has a great post on this at http://yoast.com/http-503-site-maintenance-seo/ which I'd recommend checking out.
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
-
Re-directing Multiple Sites to a Single Location
Hello Mozzers! So, I have a client whom has purchased a number of different domains that they want to re-direct to their main website. Their thinking is: that by doing as much, they will increase their opportunities to rank for related KW terms. To the best of my recollection, that is not the case, especially if they are not posting any content on those other domains, but simply redirecting the page to their "main site". I am very concerned, however, that by doing as much they run the risk of receiving a penalty from the Google Search team. I am a little hazy on this issue, as it's been some time, but to the best of my recollection doesn't this constitute "spammy behavior". Again, since it's been so long since I've had a client try to implement a strategy like this, I'm a little unfamiliar with how it may play out in the current landscape, so I'm eager to hear all of your opinions on the utility of such a strategy and whether or not it will spell doom for my client. I'm anxious to hear what you think, thanks for reading!
Branding | | maxcarnage1 -
Switch to naked domain that has higher page authority
Brilliant Moz community! I just started here and find it so helpful and am confident that I can get an answer to this. Our domain is currently https://www.example.com. I have been wanting to move to https://example.com just for a cleaner URL. To my surprise, https://example.com has the same DA but a significantly higher page authority than our current https://www.example.com. Of course my immediate reaction is to 301 to the https://example.com but I wanted to get some advice and anything we should consider before doing this. My other question would be - how is this possible? I don't remember that we ever used that domain but we also had some rather bad developers a couple of years back. Thank you so much in advance!
Branding | | kris-fannin0 -
Kickstarting a New Site
We have recently launched a new website, (domain has been registered to us for a time - just never got round to developing the website). Any suggestions on kickstarting quality traffic to get the ball rolling? Basic on page SEO work has been done and a little bit of link building, although the latter has been rather difficult to find bona fides sources. So far most of the traffic comes via referrals from bot's no actual valuable referrals or organic traffic (According to GA). And by the way, I'm NOT interested in people offering traffic bots 🙂 I'm just looking at ways of getting the site established organically, not interested in PPC at the minute. Thanks in advance for any suggestions. P.S. Please keep your answers as short as possible, I will request if I need any more information. Also please note down if you had a positive experience of your suggestion actually working. Many Thanks
Branding | | seoman100 -
Authorship/publisher markup - Author photo vs. company logo
I'm trying to get a company logo to show up next to the search results for a search on [company name] AND a separate author photo to show next to the About page of the author of the same site for a search on [author name] There is author markup on the company's "About" page and Google's structured data testing tool shows that that page is correctly configured to show the author pic. There is publisher markup on the home page and the tool shows that the page is correctly configured to show the company logo. However, no company logo shows up in the search results for the [company name] search--just an author pic next to the "about" page for the [author name] search. if I add author markup to the homepage in addition to the publisher markup, I get the author pic showing up for both [author name] and [company name] searches. How is anyone making this work? Thanks.
Branding | | Chris.Menke0 -
Google+ Pages and an unknown owner...how do I claim it or get it removed?
Hello, I am working on a clients social networking campaign and have found a Google+ page for their company. It looks like it was created approx a year ago. The client doesn't know who created it or what account has control of it in their network. I need to make a Google+ page for them so I can use it in their marketing that I can actually access. I was wondering if anyone has any insight on how I can either: Find the owner/email that is associated with the Google+ Page? or Have it removed so I can create a fresh one? which I know I can report the page as compromised but will that work in a timely manner? Please any thoughts or feedback would be greatly appreciated, and thanks!! 🙂 Jeff
Branding | | allstatetransmission0 -
Microformats/ Snippets and local SEO
Hello, In several post and also in the webinar "all about google places" it is recomended to use Microformats to format the things like "Business Name", Adress, Phone , etc Apart from using ths microformats on the product/corporate page footer and contact form, would you recomend to also use microformats on blog and 3rd party website when mentioning the corporate contact details in order to increase the citation value ?
Branding | | stereo690 -
Splitting our main website in Two... What is the fastest way for the new sites to become a brand in Googles eyes.
In a couple weeks our main website (which generates all of the revenue) will be split into two because of a long term branding / identity crisis. So my question is, how can i make sure (besides obvious 301 redirects) that these 2 new fresh urls become a brand as quick as possible in googles eyes? So far i am thinking of things like: press releases, blog posts with brand mentions. I am not ignorant and expect this to happen overnight, but we need a strong foundation to build on, which is why i am asking Anyone got a list / case study / advise so I can really blow it up on launch week? Thanks 🙂
Branding | | Hyrule0 -
301 Redirect Old Established Site to New Business Model Site?
I have a client who has a website which is getting fairly descent traffic in the current industry its in. He is launching a new business model, same industry. New domain, new brand etc. Is it better to keep both entities separate and try growing them both? Or would it be more effective in terms of acquiring ranks and traffic to 301 redirect the old established site to the new site? Transferring all the value from the old and instantly boosting the new model. Not sure if this ads anything to the topic, the new domain is also an exact domain keyword match for a highly searched term.
Branding | | sunbelt0