Domain Transfer Process / Bulk 301's Using IIS
-
Hi guys - I am getting ready to do a complete domain transfer from one domain to another completely different domain for a client due to a branding/name change. 2 things - first, I wanted to lay out a summary of my process and see if everyone agrees that its a good approach, and second, my client is using IIS, so I wanted to see if anyone out there knows a bulk tool that can be used to implement 301's on the hundreds of pages that the site contains? I have found the process to redirect each individual page, but over hundreds its a daunting task to look at.
The nice thing about the domain transfer is that it is going to be a literal 1:1 transfer, with the only things changing being the logo and the name mentions. Everything else is going to stay exactly the same, for the most part. I will use dummy domain names in the explanation to keep things easy to follow: www.old-domain.com and www.new-domain.com. The client's existing home page has a 5/10 GPR, so of course, transferring Mojo is very important.
The process:
- Clean up existing site 404's, duplicate tags and titles, etc. (good time to clean house).
- Create identical domain structure tree, changing all URL's (for instance) from www.old-domain.com/freestuff to www.newdomain.com/freestuff.
- Push several pages to a dev environment to test (dev.new-domain.com). Also, replace all instances of old brand name (images and text) with new brand name.
- Set up 301 redirects (here is where my IIS question comes in below). Each page will be set up to redirect to the new permanent destination with a 301. TEST a few.
- Choose lowest traffic time of week (from analytics data) to make the transfer ALL AT ONCE, including pushing new content live to the server for www.new-domain.com and implementing the 301's. As opposed to moving over parts of the site in chunks, moving the site over in one swoop avoids potential duplicate content issues, since the content on the new domain is essentially exactly the same as the old domain. Of course, all of the steps so far would apply to the existing sub-domains as well, IE video.new-domain.com.
- Check for errors and problems with resolution issues. Check again. Check again.
- Write to (as many as possible) link partners and inform them of new domain and ask links to be switched (for existing links) and updated (for future links) to the new domain. Even though 301's will redirect link juice, the actual link to the new domain page without the redirect is preferred.
- Track rank of targeted keywords, overall domain importance and GPR over time to ensure that you re-establish your Mojo quickly.
- That's it!
Ok, so everyone, please give me your feedback on that process!!
Secondly, as you can see in the middle of that process, the "implement 301's" section seems easier said than done, especially when you are redirecting each page individually (would take days). So, the question here is, does anyone know of a way to implement bulk 301's for each individual page using IIS? From what I understand, in an Apache environment .htaccess can be used, but I really have not been able to find any info regarding how to do this in bulk using IIS. Any help here would be GREATLY APPRECIATED!!
-
any answer here Jacob?
-
Is it better from an SEO perspective to have actual 301's in place for each page, as opposed to one for all?
-
Yes. Since the files will be the same, you're just swapping the domain.
-
Hi Jacob -- awesome, thanks so much for sending this. Just to clarify - I'm assuming that this is ONLY USABLE if the new file structure is in fact IDENTICAL, correct?
-
Heyas,
So I got great news for you. Since Step 2 results in identical file structures, you shouldn't need crazy 301's.
In fact, all you need to do is setup a wildcard redirect. In IIS, edit web.config file, modify or add
the following section to its rewrite section<rewrite><rules><rule name="old to new" enabled="true"><match url="(.*)"><conditions><add input="{HTTP_HOST}" negate="true" pattern="^www\.([.a-zA-Z0-9]+)$"></add></conditions> <action type="Redirect" url="<a href=" http:="" www.newdomain.com="" {r:0"="">http://www.NEWDOMAIN.com/{R:0}" appendQueryString="true" redirectType="Permanent" /></action></match></rule></rules></rewrite> Additionally, you can use the web install manager to install the RewriteModule. Coming from *, I actually will give praise to M$ on the GUI / ease of use.
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
-
Dealing with broken internal links/404s. What's best practice?
I've just started working on a website that has generated lots (100s) of broken internal links. Essentially specific pages have been removed over time and nobody has been keeping an eye on what internal links might have been affected. Most of these are internal links that are embedded in content which hasn't been updated following the page's deletion. What's my best way to approach fixing these broken links? My plan is currently to redirect where appropriate (from a specific service page that doesn't exist to the overall service category maybe?) but there are lots of pages that don't have a similar or equivalent page. I presume I'll need to go through the content removing the links or replacing them where possible. My example is a specific staff member who no longer works there and is linked to from a category page, should i be redirecting from the old staff member and updating the anchor text, or just straight up replacing the whole thing to link to the right person? In most cases, these pages don't rank and I can't think of many that have any external websites linking to them. I'm over thinking all of this? Please help! 🙂
Technical SEO | | Adam_SEO_Learning0 -
SERP result (URL) doesn't change after a 301
A couple of months ago there was a result in Google for our branded search term which wasn't the 'official' URL, actually the result shown in the SERP was www.mycompany-ip.nl. We've applied a 301 redirect of this URL to the 'official' URL which is a subdomain: department.mycompany.nl. From Google the redirect is obviously working, but up until now, I don't see Google replacing the incorrect URL by the correct URL. I am wondering what to do to make the result correct. André
Technical SEO | | ConclusionDigital0 -
Shortening URL's
Hello again Mozzers, I am debating what could be a fairly drastic change to the company website and I would appreciate your thoughts. The URL structure is currently as follows Product Pages
Technical SEO | | ATP
www.url.co.uk/product.html Category Pages
www.url.co.uk/products/category/subcategory.html I am debating removing the /products/ section as i feel it doesn't really add much and lengthens the url with a pointless word. This does mean however redirecting about 50-60 pages on the website, is this worth it? Would it do more damage than good? Am i just being a bit OCD and it wont really have an impact? As always, thanks for the input0 -
How can I get the most out of uploading a print magazine to my client's website?
Hi Mozers, My client is just about to launch a print magazine for her watch business. There is so much valuable content in the magazine and we want to feature it on the website both for SEO purposes and also for those who prefer to read articles online instead of reading a physical magazine. My question is: what is the best method of displaying the magazine to get the most from search rankings and also to capitalise on the beautiful imagery from the magazine. The best option that I can think of is to upload the magazine as a flipbook and create a separate page on the website to display each article so that search engine crawlers can index the content. I do understand that this could be problematic if users are only spending time reading the flipbook and not so much time on the article pages. Do you guys have any suggestions about how to get the most out of this opportunity for my client? THANK YOU IN ADVANCE. Meaghan
Technical SEO | | StoryScout0 -
Does any one have experience with SEO and .NET using 301 redirects?
A while ago I altered some of the URL's of my website. Google now thinks that I have two duplicate pages (duplicate content), I have asked my third party web developers (Who use .NET and a custom built CMS system) to simply 301 redirect the old URL to the other. However, my web developers say the following: "Solving the problems by 301 permanent re directs are out of the question as this would create infinite loops. Likely to bring down our server." They also wont do a canonical, as they say there is only one page (but two URLs) Firstly, has any one heard of this before and do they think this is true? Also, does anyone have an alternative method of getting rid of the old URL? Any thoughts would be much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | CoGri0 -
Is it better for our Blog to be blog.domain.tld or domain.tld/blog ?
I'd dread the answer being the latter rather than the former as we've spent two years building it blog.domain... However I noticed SEOmoz are domian.tld/blog and it got me thinking.... Cheers. R.
Technical SEO | | RobertChapman0 -
301'ing googlebot
I have a client that has been 301’ing googlebot to the canonical page. This is because they have a cart_id and session parameters in urls. This is mainly from when googlebot comes in on a link that has these parameters in the URL, as they don’t serve these parameters up to googlebot at all once it starts to crawl the site.
Technical SEO | | AlanMosley
I am worried about cloaking; I wanted to know if anyone has any info on this.
I know that Google have said that doing anything where you detect goolgebots useragent and treat them different is a problem.
Anybody had any experience on this, I would be glad to hear.0 -
Duplicate content and URL's
Hi Guys, Hope you are all well. Just a quick question which you will find nice and easy 🙂 I am just about to work through duplicate content pages and URL changes. Firstly, With the duplicate content issue i am finding the seo friendly URL i would normally direct to in some cases has less links, authority and root domain to it than some of the unseo friendly URL's. will this harm me if i still 301 redirect them to the seo friendly URL. Also, With the url changed it is going to be a huge job to change all the url so they are friendly and the CMS system is poor. Is there a better way of doing this? It has been suggested that we create a new webpage with a friendly URL and redirect all the pages to that. Will this lose all the weight as it will be a brand new page? Thank you for your help guys your legends!! Cheers Wayne
Technical SEO | | wazza19850