Migrating website to new CMS and to https://
-
Hi,
We are migrating an old website to a new one built in Wordpress soon.
We also added an SSL to change to https://
Most of the url's stay the same. Can we just migrate from http to https on server level, and for the url's that do change just set a 301 redirect? Or are there other things we should take into account?
-
Thanks guys, some helpful tips !
-
Hi Mat_C,
For the HTTPS update, you'll want to ensure that all HTTP URL requests are redirected to the new HTTPS versions. Usually this can be done with a global redirect (often it's easiest to do this via your .htaccess file).
However, because you're migrating from what sounds like a HTML site or non-WordPress CMS, your page paths, file extensions, etc will also be changing - so you'll want to map redirects from the old URLs to their new WordPress counterparts more granularly. This should only be necessary for URLs that have external links (links on other sites) referring to them or URLs that users will have stored in bookmarks or will find in advertisements or other referral sources.
We usually look for URLs that have external links using a tool like Moz's Link Explorer and URLs that have Direct or Referral source traffic via Google Analytics / similar.
When you know what old URLs needs to be redirected to new URLs, there are WordPress plugins (like Redirection) that can make this easier than adding an exhaustive list to your .htaccess file or similar.
Best of Luck,
Mike -
Hi Mat_C
It's great that you are migrating and switching to https.
Regarding the switching on a server level, you can perfectly do it that way. Just remember that you need to address every URL that need to be, redirected to the new site, canonicalized or 404d.
There are a lot of issues to consider take a look in these resources about migrations:
The Website Migration Guide: SEO Strategy, Process, & Checklist - Moz Blog The Ultimate SEO Guide for Successful Web Migrations at #DigitalOlympus - AleydaSolis Migration Best Practices - SMX London 2018 <- backedup by JohnMu in this tweetHope it helps.
Best luck.
GR
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
-
I have duplicate content but // are causing them
I have 3 pages duplicated just by a / Example: https://intercallsystems.com/intercall-nurse-call-systems**//**
Technical SEO | | Renalynd
https://intercallsystems.com/intercall-nurse-call-systems**/** What would cause this?? And how would I fix it? Thanks! Rena0 -
New URL Structure
Hi Guy's, For our webshop we're considering a new URL structure because longtail keywords to rank so well. Now we have /category (main focus keywords)
Technical SEO | | Happy-SEO
/product/the-product345897345123/ (nice to rank on, not that much volume) We have over 500 categories and every one of them is placed after our domain. Because i think it's better to work with a good structure and managed a way to make categories and sub-categories. The 500 categories may be the case why not every one of them is ranking so well, so that was also the choice of thinking about a new structure. So the new URL structure will be: /category (main focus keywords)
/category/subcat/ (also main focus keywords) Everything will be redirect (301, good way), so i think there won't be to much problems. I'm thinking about what to do with the /product/ URL. Because now it will be on the same level as the subcategories, and i'm affraid that when it's on that level, Google will give the same value to both of them. My options that i'm considering are: **Old way **
/product/the-product-345897345123/ .html (seen this on big webshops)
/product/the-product-345897345123.html/ Level deeper SKU /product/the-product/345897345123/ What would you suggest? The new structure would be 20 categories 500+ sub's devided under main categories 5000+ products Thanks!0 -
Changing a site from http to https
Will my rankings be affected if I change domain from http to https and force redirect?
Technical SEO | | Clickatell20 -
Website Down
Hello guys, My website hasn't been reachable for couple of hours today and I can't really understand why as no links have been built, all the best practices have been followed regarding on page optimization. I also checked google webmaster tools and there are no warning messages, crawl problems or anything so I don't understand why this has happened. Now for some reason the website is up and running again.
Technical SEO | | PremioOscar1 -
301 Redirect / cross-domain canonical to a URL w/ Ampersand
I have a question regarding ampersands, we are needing to redirect to a URL w/ an ampersand in the URL: http://local.sfgate.com/b18915250/Sam-&-Associates-Insurance-Agency Will Google pass page authority/juice despite the fact that there is an ampersand in the URL, if we were to 301 redirect or cross-domain canonical to the url? Should we 301 redirect to http://local.sfgate.com/b18915250/Sam-%26-Associates-Insurance-Agency instead of http://local.sfgate.com/b18915250/Sam-&-Associates-Insurance-Agency? I don't have the option of removing the ampersand Thank you for your time!
Technical SEO | | Gatelist0 -
Video Sitemaps <video:content_loc>and<video:player_loc></video:player_loc></video:content_loc>
Hi guys, If I'm creating a video sitemap do I need to use both: video:content_locandvideo:player_loc</video:player_loc></video:content_loc> Or could I just use video:content_loc?</video:content_loc> Thanks
Technical SEO | | Tug-Agency0 -
Redesign existing websites / worried about urls / mapping
Hi Guys, While redesigning existing websites that will have page name changes such as: example.com/products to be called example.com/solutions example.com/about-us to be called example.com/about should I 301 the old url to the new url. In the past I have not done this & I'm just wondering from an SEO point of view how bad is this? (On a scale of 1 to 10 how bad is this not 301ing urls, 10 being really bad & 1 being fine), Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Socialdude0 -
What are SEO factors in re-doing a website?
Most of my work now involves converting older websites to CMS-based sites (in Wordpress) and I'm wondering about best practices here. If I create a "dev" or "sandbox" directory for my development work how do I keep the pages from being indexed while I am working on the new site? Can I "noindex" a directory? What do I do with the old html files when the new site goes live? I'm assuming I will do a 301 redirect from domain.com/index.html to the new domain.com/, and also on all of the inner pages that have equivalent pages in the new site. But there will be a lot of old files left that have no equal in the new site. Do I just delete these, or noindex nofollw them?
Technical SEO | | bvalentine0