Having a new website build, what happens to my SEO work?
-
Hi,
We are in the process of having a new website developed by a web agency. New domain, new business name etc...
What is the best process to transfer from old domain to the new one?
What happens to all my ranked URLs?
What can re-directs do to help me?
Will I loose all my link juice on highly ranked keyword domains? I ranked 1st for a brand now, wil lthis go?
Any advice, help or hints would be great.
Thanks
Will
-
Here's a great post about migrating a website that you might find useful.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/web-site-migration-guide-tips-for-seos
-
Sounds good mate. Thanks.
-
Hi Will,
In that case it doesn't really sound like you can stick with the original domain, so as Prasad suggested I would go with the 301 and the Google WMT Change of Address.
To avoid getting too many WMT errors you might also want to spider your existing site with something like screaming frog to ensure you catch all the existing URLs and point them to the right place on the new site.
You could also potentially contact people who have linked to your existing domain and ask them to change the link to your new domain.
All the best,
Stuart
-
Thanks for your replies.
We need a new website first and foremost. Current one too old, not good enough etc...
Then we are changing our business name to fit in with new stores etc...
We want to move away from our current brand name, hence the new name. The current URL structure is poor, so a short, more SEO friendly one is being devised into the new site.
I think the 301 is best option, as we need to get away from our current site, current name and current website provider.
The company we are using are e-commerce experts so no doubt they have best solution but was just looking to see what options are out there.
Thanks
-
Hi Will,
I guess my first question would be is why are you moving to a new domain? If at all possible if you are ranking on your existing domain I would try and keep your site on there, even if you are moving to a completely new CMS and server there are ways to ensure your URL structure maps over so each URL can be replaced 1-for-1 with a new page on the new site - if this is what you are doing?
Stuart
-
Hi Will,
First you must have a process to redirect all the current ulrs to new domain's urls, using 301 permanent redirection. It will pass about 95 % of link juice to your new urls.
And also set the new domain on Google Webmaster Tools and set the old domains settings as you have moved your site to new domain. Hope you know how you can do it.
But I have no idea about your new website. Because of the new contents on your new urls maybe different than the current contents on current urls and up to the on page optimization of the new pages can be affects to your ranking. It maybe higher or lower. Because this is not just url updating.
Regards
Prasad
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
-
Is there any negative SEO effect when using Wordpress for your Blog?
I have a site entirely done in html, no CMS used. The blog page however, is wordpress. Wondering if this will effect us negatively in terms of SEO, having the blog that is linked to our site, a wordpress site. My gut is absolutely not, but the questions was asked....what do you think?
Web Design | | cschwartzel0 -
The Best Wordpress Templates and The Best SEO Plugins??
Hey guys, I am a newbie and after so many painstaking hours of building my new site using the WIX platform, I just found out that WIX is not SEO friendly 😞 So referring to (copy n pasted) the old post below posted in by Big Bazza back in June 2011, does anyone agree or have any updated information they can assist me with so I can get my new site started ? Cheers 🙂 www.studiopress.com - excellent templates and support is first class! EDIT: These all support WP 3.0 and are SEO friendly too! (They have modified the SEO functionality) However, the framework also allows you to run Yoast Wordpress SEO - which is generally considered the best SEO plugin for WP. http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/
Web Design | | Giorgio680 -
Changing design for a client. SEO concerns.
Hi there! A client requested me to change the look of his website entirely. It currently ranks #16 on Google with one of their main keywords. My problem is: The current site was made in a CMS I'm not familiar with and all of its pages urls are not SEO friendly (EX: http://www.mysite.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=49&Itemid=95). It is the first time I have come up with this situation so I would appreciate any tips or links to useful information. I tried searching in SEOmoz and came up with nothing. I'm sure this is a common problem though. Since they want a static website, for starters their page extensions will change from .php to .html I'm not 100% sure but I think this will be a problem for their current ranking in Google. Any ideas? Edit: I forgot to mention that all of the backlinks this site has points to their hompage as www.mysite.com, I guess this is good.
Web Design | | Eblan0 -
Need some advice on changing website around.
I want to make some changes to my personal website and need a little help. I originally hired someone to create this site for me several years ago. Most of the site (including the home page) is html, but the blog part (/blog) is wordpress. The main site hasn't been updated in a few years (although the blog has been updated more often.) I'm not really targeting any keywords on my site (other than just my name) so I'm not really concerned about loosing any rank or anything. I"m just curious what the best route to go should be. Would you suggest keeping the site's format "as is" so to speak? (make the front page a landing page so to speak that links to my various sites, a little bio, etc; keep an about page, contact, /blog, etc...? ) Or should I go the more traditional route and make the blog the front page? Another route is to someone keep the most recent (1,2,or 3) posts on the home page (landing page) and sort of make it a landing page / recent post page. It's sort of like that now, only the main page just links to the most recent post instead of actually adding the post, if that makes sense. There maybe some themes out there that would work well, so feel free to suggest one if you know one that would work. I think the Aboutme.com pages look pretty nice and will let you use a custom domain, but I'm not sure. (And it's not a complete theme, so not sure that's the best option.) Thanks!
Web Design | | NoahsDad0 -
Best Website Builder - Help Me Choose
I need to built a multi language site (to built a Pilates, Yoga site) and I will use a site builder. After posting questions on wix.com I came to the fact I should continue my research because there are not SEO friendly. Do you have a suggestions? Limited to html knowledge, using a website builder is my only option. Here are some of the features I need: Multilanguage Web Site Mobile version SEO Friendly Nice Template Selections( this is important) HTML customization Twitter, Facebook, Blog... I'm not looking at free website builder, when you want good features, there is a price to paid. Thank you for your help and suggestions, BigBlaze
Web Design | | BigBlaze2050 -
To many scripts in my homepage. This is a problem in SEO?
I adding a lot of new features to my website: JS animated, menus, google translate, alexa counter, google analytics, salesforce, and so on. My website is full of scripts and im worry about the SEO. Is that an issue?
Web Design | | Naghirniac0 -
SEO list for creating the *perfect* website
If you could build your website from scratch and have your developers do anything you want (within reason), what list of SEO requirements would you send them? Does anyone know of any good articles on the perfect SEO wish list? Happy Holidays!
Web Design | | MirandaP1 -
New URL Strucutre
Hello all! I'm new to SeoMoz and would like to introduce myself and say thanks for all of the great content. This is definitely the premium website I have been looking for. My question is regarding a new URL structure that will be implemented with our website redesign. We are looking to make our URL's more user and SEO friendly. We will be using 301 redirects to reroute our existing structure when the site goes live. Background
Web Design | | kauffmantire
I work in a company that retails automotive tires. I would consider class (performance, off-road, highway, etc.) to be the most important category, but based on our analytics we receive much more traffic from brand terms. This is most likely because our customers are not educated on specific tire classes and generally do head term searches or search by brand / product name. Ultimately the will have to buy from a certain class based on driving habits. Link and URL Structure
(Parameters) The model page includes links to individual tire size specific pages. We are using the model page as our primary SEO page because the only difference from the 5 - 60 tire size specific pages per model will be the tire size itself. This means that all of the remaining content will be duplicated multiple times over. All links to the tire size specific page from the model page will have a rel="nofollow" attribute attached to it. All tire size specific pages will have a rel="canonical" tag pointing back to the model page Out of the following structures, which would you consider to be the best format: 1. http://www.company.com/category/brand/model
or
2. http://www.company.com/brand/category/model
or
3. http://www.company.com/tires/category/model We will append the specific tire-size to the URL on the item specific pages. Any other options or strategies will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for your help!0