Redesigning client website and will be losing a lot of landing pages. How to avoid tanking search traffic?
-
We are working with a client who is changing the direction of the company's marketing efforts. The current site includes many (approx 100) pages for each partner they work with (each partner has its own page). The new site will be losing many of these and we want to be sure we don't destroy organic traffic/rankings in the process. These landing pages don't directly garner the most traffic but it will definitely be a big change in the size of the site.
Any advice for how to best handle the redesign is appreciated, thanks!
-
Thanks Anthony and Matt - we were definitely planning on the 301s, I just had concerns about the sheer volume of pages that would be going away. Sounds like we're on the right track! Appreciate your responses..
-
I agree with Anthony on this one - make sure you 301 redirect the pages you are loosing to the most relevant pages in your new structure.
-
Hi Kathleen,
Removing pages can be a scary thing, but if those pages don't garner much traffic in the first place and you 301 redirect any with external links pointing at them to the most relevant page on your new site, you'll be fine. Quite often removing low quality pages (not sure if you think yours fit this description) can actually lead to a nice improvement in organic traffic.
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
-
Safety Data Sheet PDFs are Showing Higher in Search Results than Product Pages
I have a client who just launched an updated website that has WooCommerce added to it. The website also has a page of Safety Data Sheets that are PDFs that contain information about some of the products. When we do a Google search for many of the products the Safety Data Sheets show up first in the search results instead of the product pages. Has anyone had this happen and know how to solve the issue?
Technical SEO | | teamodea0 -
Carousel of cards at the top of a Google search results page?
When I searched for "mapping software", a carousel of images which displayed a variety of different companies appeared above the results list. Does anyone know what this is and how you go about getting your company into this carousel? The attached image displays the carousel. gRjF1
Technical SEO | | eSpatial0 -
Lots of Pages Dropped Out of Google's Index?
Until yesterday, my website had about 1200 pages indexed in Google. I did lots of changes: removed low quality content, rewrote passable content to make it better, wrote high quality content, got lots of likes and shares on social networks, etc. Now this morning I see that out of 1252 pages submitted, only 691 are indexed. Is that a temporary situation related to the recent updates? Anyone seeing this? What should I interpret about this?
Technical SEO | | sbrault740 -
Hotel affiliate website - noindex pages with little unique content?
We are well into development of a hotel affiliate website (using Expedia Affiliate Network), and I know there are many challenges to SEO when using an affiliate system - one of the biggest being how to handle duplicate content. Outside of blog posts and static marketing pages, the majority of the textual content is contained in hotel descriptions. We will be creating unique descriptions over time, but we are a small team and this will be a lengthy process. My question for you mozzers, is whether or not it's advisable for ranking purposes to noindex any page with mostly 'stock' content, and only allow Google to index hotel pages with unique descriptions? Thanks for any input!
Technical SEO | | CassisGroup0 -
How best to set up Google + business pages for clients
I wish to setup a business page on google+ business page for my clients but it requires a personal profile, my clients don't want a personal profile but do want the business page. Currently i have set them up with pages on my personal profile but do can i allow the client to manage it? so i am not sure this is the best way Whats the best way for web developers to setup Google+ accounts for clients?
Technical SEO | | Bristolweb1 -
Page crawling is only seeing a portion of the pages. Any Advice?
last couple of page crawls have returned 14 out of 35 pages. Is there any suggestions I can take.
Technical SEO | | cubetech0 -
How to attach at text to image that other websites use from my website
I often have other websites link to my website. They will do this with an image that they pull off of my website. (actually my website continues to serve the image). These inbound links are great, but they don't have alt text. Is there a way for me to attach alt text to the images, or is this something the other website needs to code themselves?
Technical SEO | | EugeneF0 -
Will Google Continue to Index the Page with NoIndex Tag Upon Google +1 Button Impression or Click?
The FAQs for Google +1 button suggests as follows: "+1 is a public action, so you should add the button only to public, crawlable pages on your site. Once you add the button, Google may crawl or recrawl the page, and store the page title and other content, in response to a +1 button impression or click." If my page has NoIndex tag, while at the same time inserted with Google +1 button on the page, will Google recognise the NoIndex Tag on the page (and will not index the page) despite the +1 button's impression or clicks send signals to Google spiders?
Technical SEO | | globalsources.com0