301 process, migration to new domain
-
Hi all!
We have an old site wordpress based, with great ranking and PR 7, called www.europe-internship.com which is going to be migrated into our new Django site www.eurasmus.com (specifically eurasmus.com/en/europe-internships)
The new one is a much more advanced version that we will keep developing.We have been migrating the information already but we are planning to apply the 301s in the next weeks to start passing the SEO value to our new site and traffic.
We have all the url structures and everything checked and technically we are ready for it.
Therefore, we are almost ready.I have 2 questions:
- The new site includes more services, like accommodation, information...not only internships. Therefore, should we point the most relevant urls from our previous site to our home to share the value or just to the internships section? I am afraid that if the bounce rate goes higher from the 301 we could loose some value...
2)Should we point all the urls at the same time to the new site? Home, vacancies, blog pages, etc... or start gradually doing it to see how it goes till we make it to all the pages including the home?
The old site still makes some money and I am not sure how quick will be to pass the SEO value, so in the way we may loose few thousand euros...We understand that, but we want to check what would be the best in your opinion.
Let me know what you think and your opinion!
Thank you in advance!
-
Totally clear now.
Thanks!
-
Jose
You should always point redirects at pages that have the same, or 98% the same content. See Cyrus's article: http://moz.com/blog/save-your-website-with-redirects - if you point all the redirects into the Internships section, the rest of the site should inherit a little bit of that link authority. If you point old internship pages at your homepage, Google will probably see the content is a bit different and likely not pass value anyway.
So treat the new Internships section on the new site, as a little site inside the big one and redirect your old Internships site into the new internships section. Do it page by page so all the content matches
-
Hi Dan!
Thanks for your answer.
Well, the area of internships in the site is let´s say its 99% the same.
Before it was just an internship site and now it has accommodaiton and student guides.what if we pass all the value to the area of internships? Would it affect also some other areas like accommodaiton, etc or just the internships area?
That is why we were wondering if passing some of the 301s to the home or similar...What do you think aboutthis?
Thanks!
-
Hi Jose
If this is essentially the same site with the _same _content I would migrate all content and redirect all pages to their individual new pages right away. The old site is making money, but by pointing users at the new site, you'll make money at the new site right? No money lost.
If this is a 1:1 move - Domain A --> Domain B and all the content is basically the same, that's really the way to go. You'll make it harder in the long run for Google and users to understand what site is the correct one.
Did I understand that correctly, or is the move not so simple?
-
Thank you for your answer.
About this:
- I agree with your strategy. You should point them to the most valuable pages on the new site, the ones that are the most closely related. As for bounce rate, yes it is important, but I don't believe it will devalue your 301 redirects.
For user experience, I am sure that we should just redirect to the internship section but the big question is: it will give tremendously value to our internship section, what about the others? Will those benefit as well or will remain totally the same?
Agree with second answer...
I hope I can get some more opinions and see what to do!
Thank you for your help!
-
- The new site includes more services, like accommodation, information...not only internships. Therefore, should we point the most relevant urls from our previous site to our home to share the value or just to the internships section? I am afraid that if the bounce rate goes higher from the 301 we could loose some value...
- I agree with your strategy. You should point them to the most valuable pages on the new site, the ones that are the most closely related. As for bounce rate, yes it is important, but I don't believe it will devalue your 301 redirects.
For question 2, I think you should use your discretion. I am not sure how easy it is to manage and maintain two sites. I always like to do everything at one time, just rip the bandaid off. But that is up to you in this case. If you are worried about conversions, I understand that. But what happens when someone clicks on a page for your old domain, then clicks a link in that domain that redirects them to a new site? That to me seems like a recipe for bad user experience.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Using a Reverse Proxy and 301 redirect to appear Sub Domain as Sub Directory - what are the SEO Risks?
We’re in process to move WordPress blog URLs from subdomains to sub-directory. We aren’t moving blog physically, but using reverse proxy and 301 redirection to do this. Blog subdomain URL is https://blog.example.com/ and destination sub-directory URL is https://www.example.com/blog/ Our main website is e-commerce marketplace which is YMYL site. This is on Windows server. Due to technical reasons, we can’t physically move our WordPress blog to the main website. Following is our Technical Setup Setup a reverse proxy at https://www.example.com/blog/ pointing to https://blog.example.com/ Use a 301 redirection from https://blog.example.com/ to https://www.example.com/blog/ with an exception if a traffic is coming from main WWW domain then it won’t redirect. Thus, we can eliminate infinite loop. Change all absolute URLs to relative URLs on blog Change the sitemap URL from https://blog.example.com/sitemap.xml to https://www.example.com/blog/sitemap.xml and update all URLs mentioned within the sitemap. SEO Risk Evaluation We have individual GA Tracking ID and individual Google Search Console Properties for main website and blog. We will not merge them. Keep them separate as they are. Keeping this in mind, I am evaluating SEO Risks factors Right now when we receive traffic from main website to blog (or vice versa) then it is considered as referral traffic and new cookies are set for Google Analytics. What’s going to happen when its on the same domain? Which type of settings change should I do in Blog’s Google Search Console? (A). Do I need to request “Change of Address” in the Blog’s search console property? (B). Should I re-submit the sitemap? Do I need to re-submit the blog sitemap from the https://www.example.com/ Google Search Console Property? Main website is e-commerce marketplace which is YMYL website, and blog is all about content. So does that impact SEO? Will this dilute SEO link juice or impact on the main website ranking because following are the key SEO Metrices. (A). Main website’s Avg Session Duration is about 10 minutes and bounce rate is around 30% (B). Blog’s Avg Session Duration is 33 seconds and bounce rate is over 92%
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joshibhargav_200 -
Park Or 301
We main domain is **.com, but we have the other domain by name .ir.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Pintapin
So now we want to remove (.ir).
what should we do? ,301? , park domain? Disallow?
Which is better for SEO?0 -
Can i migrate to a new domain without losing rankings?
we are looking at migrating to a new domain name, but worried about current rankings.. can we do this and keep our rankings if we 301? if we can expect a dip, how long will that generally take? thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Direct_Ram0 -
Can a move to a new domain (with 301's) shake off a google algorithm penalty
we have done everything under the sun using the holy grail of google guidelines to get our site back onto page 1 for our domain. we have recovered (penguin and panda) algorithm filters for keywords that were page 1 going to page 7 and now page 2. its been 2 years and we cant hit page 1 again. this is our final phase we cna think of.. do you thin kit will work if we move to a new domain. and how much traffic/rankings can we expect to lose in the short-term?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Direct_Ram0 -
Domain dominance
I've just started to work for a company who've purchased masses of domains with every conceivable permutation based on all their products with every extension possible e.g .biz . eu. .net (including .co.uk and .com of course). I have two questions: 1. Is it worth keeping all these (they want to add more) domains or let them expire? 2. All the purchased domains are online - is there any point (they redirect with a 301)?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LJHopkins0 -
Is it safe to 301 redirect old domain to new domain after a manual unnatural links penalty?
I have recently taken on a client that has been manually penalised for spammy link building by two previous SEOs. Having just read this excellent discussion, http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lifting-a-manual-penalty-given-by-google-personal-experience I am weighing up the odds of whether it's better to cut losses and recommend moving domains. I had thought under these circumstances it was important not to 301 the old domain to the new domain but the author (Lewis Sellers) comments on 3/4/13 that he is aware of forwards having been implemented without transferring the penalty to the new domain. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lifting-a-manual-penalty-given-by-google-personal-experience#jtc216689 Is it safe to 301? What's the latest thinking?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ewan.Kennedy0 -
SEO value in baclklink from blog.domain VS domain
Will a back-link from "domain.com/abc" and "blog.domain.com/abc" have same value from an SEO perspective? Assume same article written on both sites.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen
I have been told the bots look at the domain value and the only links from blogs that have less value are in case of comments. As long as the "blog.domain/abc" page includes a full article and not a blog comment then it counts fully for SEO. Is this correct?0 -
301 a strong but under-performing landing page to a new domain?
Hi guys, Our website have a very strong landing page (PA 80, more than 1,000 domains linking) but is currently not ranking at all as the targeted terms are dominated by exact match domains. We are thinking of redirecting this particular page to a new partial match domain targeting the same keywords. Is it a good move?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sssrpm0