How would I be able to move content from one domain to another?
-
I have a client that wants to migrate some of his site's content to a new domain, not all of the content, just some of it. This is not an address change. He wants to continue actively using the domain name where all this content currently resides, so it's not a matter of notifying search engines of an address change.
The first thing that comes to mind is the use of the canonical tag, but it's not making sense. Any recommendations?
Thanks in advance.
-
Hello Chris, you're absolutely right. It took me a while to conceptualize the process, but referring to projects where I've used 301's to redirect one URL to another helped me realize that I perform the task almost on a daily bases. The one twist that's a first for me is that of redirecting URL's from an active domain to another.
A note to readers that may have a similar question - the 301 redirect is implemented on the donor domain and not on the receiving domain (where content is being move to) explaining why the URL can no longer exist on the donor domain.
With much appreciation, thank you.
-
If a page of content is being moved from a URL on domain A to a URL on domain B and will no longer exist on domain A, then the 301 redirect from the first URL to the second would be used to indicate that. A 301 redirect doesn't have to redirect the whole site, it can be used on a per URL basis. Here, read through this info on redirects:
-
Wow, I think I experiencing an episode of "deer in the headlights". Whok
Thanks for the link, Chris, I'm still baffled. I also think, and please pardon if I'm mistaken, that there's an important factor that's being overlooked (my bad). The original domain (domain A) is going to remain in use curating some of the original content, and a new domain (domain B) is going to be established to curate some of the content migrated from domain A where the content was originally created. Implementing a 301 from one domain to another is not applicable since domain A is going to still be public facing with its own content.
l hope this is starting to make sense.
-
Completely agree with Chris!
In your question you mentioned that your client wants to migrate some of his content from one location to another and in order to successfully do that you should use 301redirection so that Google can transfer the juice to new location and visitors can also move to the new location without any hassle.
Canonicals comes in when you need one content on both locations but want to prefer one over other!
-
Emmanuel, it sounds like you're just talking about setting up 301 redirects from the URLs of the old locations to the URLs of the new location. . This can be done when changing content location within a domain or when changing it to another domain. The rel=canonical tag wouldn't be the right solution if you don't actually want the content to exist in both locations.
This Google webmaster tools info might be useful to you:
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
-
Copied Content - Who is a winner
Someone copied the content from my website just I publish the article. So who is the winner? and I am in any problem? What to do? Please check Image. RkJ0p9l.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | varunrupal0 -
Redirect closed shop to main shop, or keep the domain and content alive and use it for link building?
Hello, We used to have two shops selling our products, a small shop with a small selection of only our best quality products (domain smallshop.com), and a big shop with everything (bigshop.com). It used to make sense (without going into full detail), but it's not relevant anymore, and so we decided to stop maintaining the small shop, because it was time consuming and not worth it. There is some really good links pointing to smallshop.com, and the content is original (the product descriptions are different between both shops). So far, we just switch the "add to cart" button on the small shop into a link to the same product on the big shop, and did links from the small shop to the big shop also on categories pages. So the question is: in your opinion, is it better to do that, keep the small shop and content alive and build links to our big shop, or do 301 redirections and shut down completely the small shop ? Thanks for your opinion!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Colage0 -
Duplicate content with URLs
Hi all, Do you think that is possible to have duplicate content issues because we provide a unique image with 5 different URLs ? In the HTML code pages, just one URL is provide. It's enough for that Google don't see the other URLs or not ? Example, in this article : http://www.parismatch.com/People/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112 The same image is available on: http://cdn-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize1-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize2-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize3-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg Thank you very much for your help. Julien
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Julien.Ferras0 -
Moving multiple Sites to One Site and SEO Impact/Ideas
Hi there, We are in the process of moving 2 sites with higher page authority to another site we own (that is our company brand), so essentially 3 sites into one. We're at risk of losing a lot of SEO from the original 2 sites that have all the product information. We are doing this since we merged companies a couple years back and need one web precense. Anyhow, the site launch date is in 3 months and the recommendation is to start moving content over prior to that for top pages, which is a big undertaking when we are launching all the pages again with new content, redeisgn and moving sites in 3 months. If it's the right move, we should do it, but I just wanted to get opinions on how others have handled something similiar when moving to a site with lower site authority and trying not to lose rankings.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lauramrobinson320 -
Community inside the domain or in a separate domain
Hi there, I work for an ecommerce company as an online marketing consultant. They make kitchenware, microware and so on. The are reviewing their overall strategy and as such they want to build up a community. Ideally, they would want to have the community in a separate domain. This domain wouldn't have the logo of the brand. This community wouldn't promote the brand itself. The brand would post content occassionally and link the store domain. The reasoning of this approach is to not interfere in the way of the community users and also the fact that the branded traffic acquired doesn't end up buying at the store I like this approach but I am concerned because the brand is not that big to have two domains separated and lose all the authority associated with one strong domain. I would definitely have everything under the same domain, store and community, otherwise we would have to acquire traffic for two domains. 1. What do you think of both scenarios, one domain versus two? Which one is better? 2. Do you know any examples of ecommerce companies with successful communities within the store domain? Thanks and regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | footd0 -
Multiply domains and duplicate content confusion
I've just found out that a client has multiple domains which are being indexed by google and so leading me to worry that they will be penalised for duplicate content. Wondered if anyone could confirm a) are we likely to be penalised? and b) what should we do about it? (i'm thinking just 301 redirect each domain to the main www.clientdomain.com...?). Actual domain = www.clientdomain.com But these also exist: www.hostmastr.clientdomain.com www.pop.clientdomain.com www.subscribers.clientdomain.com www.www2.clientdomain.com www.wwwww.clientdomain.com ps I have NO idea how/why all these domains exist I really appreciate any expertise on this issue, many thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bisibee10 -
Question on Moving Content
I just moved my site from a Wordpress hosted site to Squarespace. We have the same domain, however, the content is now located on a different URL (again, same base domain). I'm unable to easily set up 301 redirects for the old content to be mapped to the new content so I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for a workaround. Basically, I want to make sure google knows that Product A's page is now located at this new URL. (www.domain.com/11245 > www.domain.com/product-a). Maybe it's something that I don't have to worry about anymore because the old content is gone? I mean, I have a global redirect set up that no matter what you enter after the base domain, it now goes to the homepage but I just want to make sure I'm not missing something here. Really appreciate your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheBatesMillStore1 -
Moving External TLD To Subfolder of Corporate Domain?
Our Challenge: Our corporate site receives about 20,000 visits per week. Unfortunately, nearly half of those visitors are "looking" for a link we provide in our navigation link found on our homepage that takes them to our “Employee" focused site which resides on a separate TLD. Because so much of the traffic to our corporate site lands on our homepage only as a stepping stone en route to the "Employee" site, the bounce rate, time on site and Average page views for our corporate site are all negatively impacted. Meanwhile, the "Employee" site gets more than 100,000 visits per month and enjoys enviable metrics- low bounce rate, high average page views and average time on site. Our Goal: minimize or eliminate the negative impact of so many visitors using our corporate site as a stepping stone to reach the employee site. leverage the traffic volume and positive metrics enjoyed by the employee site to improve the search engine authority of our corporate site. Our Solution: Move the "Employee" site to a subfolder of our corporate site – for example www.oursite.com/employees Install Google Analytics on all pages within the subfolder Provide a 301 redirect from old "Employee" domain to new employee subfolder The expected result is an increase in overall corporate site traffic, more page views, higher time on site, and lower overall bounce rate from merging these two website properties. Our Need: After comparing the subfolder option to subdomain approach, we feel that the proposed solution is our best course of action and are looking for validation or an alternate recommendation.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ChrisMakara0