Migration Challenge Question
-
I work for a company that recently acquired another company and we are in the process of merging the brands.
Right now we have two website, lets call them:
We are working with a web development company who is designing our brand new site, which will launch at the end of September, we can call that www.parentacquired.com.
Normally it would be simple enough to just 301 redirect all content from www.parentcompanyalpha.com and www.acquiredcompanyalpha.com to the mapped migrated content on www.parentacquired.com.
But that would be too simple. The reality is that only 30% of www.acquiredcompanyalpha.com will be migrating over, as part of that acquired business is remaining independent of the merged brands, and might be sold off.
So someone over there mirrored the www.acquiredcompanyalpha.com site and created an exact duplicate of www.acquiredcompanybravo.com.
So now we have duplicate content for that site out there (I was unaware they were doing this now, we thought they were waiting until our new site was launched).
Eventually we will want some of the content from acquiredcompanyalpha.com to redirect to acquiredcompanybravo.com and the remainder to parentacquired.com.
What is the best interim solution to maintain as much of the domain values as possible? The new site won't launch until end of September, and it could fall into October. I have two sites that are mirrors of each other, one with a domain value of 67 and the new one a lowly 17. I am concerned about the duplicate site dragging down that 67 score.
I can ask them to use rel=canonical tags temporarily if both sites are going to remain until Sept/Oct timeframe, but which way should they go? I am inclined to think the best result would be to have acquiredcompanybravo.com rel=canonical back to acquiredcompanyalpha.com for now, and when the new site launches, remove those and redirect as appropriate. But will that have long term negative impact on acquiredcomapnybravo.com?
Sorry, if this is convoluted, it is a little crazy with people in different companies doing different things that are not coordinated.
-
it was actually a challenge to try to detail out.
It certainly seemed so
And you are very welcome - glad to have been able to help.
-Andy
-
Thanks Andy - I am so accustomed to thinking in permanent changes and in 301s and rel=canonical, that the obvious 302 skipped my thinking. While I am unsure if they will be willing to 302 in this interim period, it certainly will be my primary recommendation now.
Thanks for reading though that, it was actually a challenge to try to detail out.
-
Andy's suggestion seems perfect to me!
This is kind of an extreme example of what 302's were meant to do. Your content will remain exactly where it needs to be for reference purposes and the eventual 301 redirects when your new website goes live. Meanwhile the bravo site with your duplicated content will no longer be duplicated and no link juice or rankings are going anywhere. (In theory)
Minimal work as if the site is an exact copy it will take only a couple of lines to redirect the whole site.
-
Hi Kenn,
I think I understand all that.
In this situation, you could always use a 302 temporary redirect rather than canonical and tell Google that pages will be returning to normal at some point, and in the meantime, a 302 doesn't pass page rank so in theory, nothing should move and it shouldn't have any negative impact. It removes the duplication issue nicely.
A canonical will pass some page rank, and as a result, this might mess things up for you.
-Andy
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
-
Scary bug in search console: All our pages reported as being blocked by robots.txt after https migration
We just migrated to https and created 2 days ago a new property in search console for the https domain. Webmaster Tools account for the https domain now shows for every page in our sitemap the warning: "Sitemap contains urls which are blocked by robots.txt."Also in the dashboard of the search console it shows a red triangle with warning that our root domain would be blocked by robots.txt. 1) When I test the URLs in search console robots.txt test tool all looks fine.2) When I fetch as google and render the page it renders and indexes without problem (would not if it was really blocked in robots.txt)3) We temporarily completely emptied the robots.txt, submitted it in search console and uploaded sitemap again and same warnings even though no robots.txt was online4) We run screaming frog crawl on whole website and it indicates that there is no page blocked by robots.txt5) We carefully revised the whole robots.txt and it does not contain any row that blocks relevant content on our site or our root domain. (same robots.txt was online for last decade in http version without problem)6) In big webmaster tools I could upload the sitemap and so far no error reported.7) we resubmitted sitemaps and same issue8) I see our root domain already with https in google SERPThe site is https://www.languagecourse.netSince the site has significant traffic, if google would really interpret for any reason that our site is blocked by robots we will be in serious trouble.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
This is really scary, so even if it is just a bug in search console and does not affect crawling of the site, it would be great if someone from google could have a look into the reason for this since for a site owner this really can increase cortisol to unhealthy levels.Anybody ever experienced the same problem?Anybody has an idea where we could report/post this issue?0 -
HTTP to HTTPS Question
Hello, I have a question regarding SSL Certificates I think I know the answer to but wanted to make sure. One of our clients’ site uses http for their pages but when they started creating Registration forms they created a full duplicate site on https (so now there are two versions of all of the pages). I know due to duplicate concerns this could be an issue and needs to resolved (as well as the pros and cons of both) but if they are already set up with https does it make sense to just move everything there or in some instances would it pay to keep some pages http (using canonical tags, redirects, htccess…etc)? – Most of the information I found related to making the decision prior to having both or describing the process but I couldn’t find anything that specifically related to if both are already present. I thought that the best approach because everything’s already set up is to just move everything over to the more secure one but was curious if anybody had any insight? Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ben-R0 -
Couple questions: backlink bartering and getting backlinks in less developed markets.
How do you guys go about getting sustainable links from high authority sites? In some markets, like say SEO, it can be as easy as writing great content and "people will share it" because there are a ton of SEO websites on the internet and all of them are talking about SEO and want to share with you great SEO content. But as you guys know there are markets that aren't as well developed online - where do you look for backlinks for these markets? I'm working on a project and I'm trying to put together a good backlinking strategy. Part of it will be chasing backlinks from University websites (relevant to my market). What I'm wondering here is if its OK by Google to barter for links. Say you have an online store and you give the University a "student's discount" in exchange for a link (I don't know if this would be appealing enough but is it fair game as far as Google is concerned)?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mack-ayache0 -
Question spam malware causing many indexed pages
Hey Mozzers, I was speaking with a friend today about a site that he has been working on that was infected when he began working on it. Here (https://www.google.ca/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=site:themeliorist.ca) you can see that the site has 4400 indexed pages, but if you scroll down you will see some pages such as /pfizer-viagra-samples/ or /dapoxetine-kentucky/. All of these pages are returning 404 errors, and I ran it through SEO spider just to see if any of these pages would show up, and they don't. This is not an issue for a client, but I am just curious why these pages are still hanging around in the index. Maybe others have experience this issue too. Cheers,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | evan890 -
Htaccess 301 regex question
I need some help with a regex for htaccess. I want to 301 redirect this: http://olddomain.com/oldsubdir/fruit.aspx to this: https://www.newdomain.com/newsubdir/FRUIT changes: different protocol (http -> https) add 'www.' different domain (olddomain and newdomain are constants) different subdirectory (oldsubdir and newsubdir are constants) 'fruit' is a variable (which will contain only letters [a-zA-Z]) is it possible to make 'fruit' UPPER case on the redirect (so 'fruit' -> 'FRUIT') remove '.aspx' I think it's something like this (placed in the .htaccess file in the root directory of olddomain): RedirectMatch 301 /oldsubdir/(.*).aspx https://www.newdomain.com/newsubdir/$1 Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | scanlin0 -
URL Question and Advice on Site Architecture
Good morning one and all, i have a specific question pertaining to my Domain Migration Website URL structure. I have a computer repair business that I am re branding and my question at this point is centrally focused on how to best handle my URL naming structure that will best suite my needs for my the Search Engines and also my customers UX while not looking SPAMMY I am a web developer and SEO and I am building a SILO Site Architecture in WordPress using Pages (not Posts) so no discussion is need on the Permalink structure. I am attaching several Images below of Screen Shots of the new site that I have designed so that you may look at them and see the Silo Architecture Layout in action for the most part. OK, here we go. Looking at the Silo Mast Head, we can see that the following Main Menu items each represent a specific Silo Theme Silo Theme # 1 - COMPUTER REPAIR Silo Theme # 2 - VIRUS REMOVAL Silo Theme # 3 - PHONE REPAIR Silo Theme # 4 - NETWORKING Silo Theme # 5 - DATA RECOVERY My specific question is, if /computer-repair/ is a main silo theme (WP -Parent Page) and /laptop-repair/ is a (Child Page) of Computer Repair is the following example below (the actual URL string) going to 'trigger' a SPAM signal to either the user or GOOGLE or both?? URL String: http://www.pcmedicsoncall.com/computer-repair/laptop-repair/ Here's another example with the VIRUS REMOVAL SILO http://www.pcmedicsoncall.com/virus-removal/malware-removal/ Seeing how computer repair is the main silo theme that cannot be changed in the URL Structure (it can) but I wont change it seeing how COMPUTER REPAIR is the single largest keyword phrase used by individuals when they are looking for computer repair. Secondly, - LAPTOP REPAIR is also a Keyword Phrase that that has HIGH search queries that I am trying to rank for and that too (ideally) should also not changed! How do I deal with this situation? Or, am I seeing this in a overly paranoid way? I currently have the site allowing only my IP Address so I am afraid that the screen shots below is all that I can do on this in lieu of actually visiting the Site Currently, I have my URL Structure where Wilmington NC immediately follows the targeted keyword phrase for the Silo Theme like below http://www.pcmedicsoncall.com/virus-removal-wilmington-nc/malware-removal/ The example above, - including the location after the keyword phrase does look much more attractive and breaks it up so it does not read SPAMMY and it will help with SEO but yet another problem exists using the location after the keyword phrase which I explain in detail Below. On top of doing a complete re-branding Domain Change I am actually going to be relocating myself and my business to Charlotte, NC at the end of the summer so I have serious doubts if using Wilmington NC within the URL structure would be a wise idea considering that I will be relocating and an internal 301 Redirect on a Newly Migrated site 2-3 months after the initial site migration and site setup may have some negative impact and confuse Google and compound the situation thus much further despite the fact that it would immediately help me bounce back up with my rankings after the migration process. Thoughts a suggestions on both explained scenarios please? I have asked this specif question once already but obviously people do not read my very detailed and well thought out questions. This can also be viewed here>http://www.seomoz.org/q/need-very-urgent-advice-on-wedsite-migration-questions-please#reply_150847> Thank you Sincerely, Marshall Thompson SEOMOZ-PC-MEDICS-ON-CALL-1.jpg SEOMOZ-PC-MEDICS-ON-CALL1.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarshallThompson310 -
Questions about turning my wordpress site into an ecommerce site. Experience needed.
I have a wordpress site that is about a product that is now getting some great traffic. Right now It has affiliate stuff on it. I want to sell my own product so I will be turning this wordpress site into an ecommerce site. I want to redesign it so I am not looking for simple plugins to just add a cart. The part I am really confused about is what to do with my posts and categories? How does that work when turning this site into an ecommerce site? Lets say the site is "hats for adults" My post pages are things like "funny hats for adults", "hats for adult men" etc etc. Would I turn these posts pages into like category pages that have a category of products. Or should I create real categories and have my developer turn those into the ecommerce category pages and then redirect my posts to those categories? Maybe I don't even know what I am talking about. Is this even making sense? This is a small site (5posts and 1 category) and most of the traffic will come from the homepage keywords anyways.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PEnterprises0 -
Questions regarding Google's "improved url handling parameters"
Google recently posted about improving url handling parameters http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/07/improved-handling-of-urls-with.html I have a couple questions: Is it better to canonicalize urls or use parameter handling? Will Google inform us if it finds a parameter issue? Or, should we have a prepare a list of parameters that should be addressed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0