When migrating website platforms but keeping the domain name how best do we add the new site to google webmaster tools? Best redirect practices?
-
We are moving from BigCommerce to Shopify but maintaining our domain name and need to make sure that all links redirect to their corresponding links. We understand the nature of 301s and are fine with that, but when it comes to adding the site to google webmaster tools, not losing link juice and the change of address tool we are kind of lost. Any advice would be most welcome. Thank you so much in advance!
-
Thank you so much this was very helpful.
-
Thanks Ken that makes me feel much better thank you so much.
E
-
Just to be clear on the change of address tool part of the question - use of that tool doesn't apply in this scenario. It is only to be used when moving the domain a new, different domain name. Since you're domain name is staying the same, there is no "new address" to point to. The 301s will take care of the page address changes - the change of address tool has nothing to do with these page-level changes.
Hope that helps?
Paul
P.S. Make damn sure you've got a couple of redundant mechanisms in place to constantly check for 404s due to missed/incorrect redirects after the move so you can catch & fix asap (Webmaster Tools, server error logs, Screaming Frog/Xenu etc). And run a full check on every redirect you write. It's soooo easy for a misplace space, period etc to break what looks like a perfectly good redirect. Uploading your redirect list to the paid version of Screaming Frog and running through there is the easiest way I know to do this. Good luck!
-
Hi,
We just went through a similar platform change and found that for the most part the 301s did the heavy lifting. We are still finding pages that we missed, but we got a large majority and I'm happy to say that our traffic/rankings are doing well (getting better everyday).
We did't re-verify we just left the verification code on the site and Google seemed to catch on.
Good luck on the move!
Ken
-
If I am understanding the question right?... 301 Redirects should save the Juice, as far as your Webmaster tools I think the only thing you can do is re-verify it using one of their acceptable methods and let Google update the info on its own. With a re-verify Google won't lose information from the past they will just add the new info going forward.
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
-
Best SEO practice for multiple languages in website
HI, We would like to include multiple languages for our global website. What's the best practice to gain from UI and SEO too. Can we have auto language choosing website as per browsing location? Or dedicated pages for important languages like www.website.com/de for German. If we go for latter, how about when users browsing beside language page as they will be usually in English
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Old site penalised, we moved: Shall we cut loose from the old site. It's curently 301 to new site.
Hi, We had a site with many bad links pointing to it (.co.uk). It was knocked from the SERPS. We tried to manually ask webmasters to remove links.Then submitted a Disavow and a recon request. We have since moved the site to a new URL (.com) about a year ago. As the company needed it's customer to find them still. We 301 redirected the .co.uk to the .com There are still lots of bad links pointing to the .co.uk. The questions are: #1 Do we stop the 301 redirect from .co.uk to .com now? The .co.uk is not showing in the rankings. We could have a basic holding page on the .co.uk with 'we have moved' (No link). Or just switch it off. #2 If we keep the .co.uk 301 to the .com, shall we upload disavow to .com webmasters tools or .co.uk webmasters tools. I ask this because someone else had uploaded the .co.uk's disavow list of spam links to the .com webmasters tools. Is this bad? Thanks in advance for any advise or insight!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SolveWebMedia0 -
Large Number of Links appearing in Google Webmaster Tools
Hello, In the last week we have noticed an extremely large number of backlink links appearing in Google Webmaster Tools. One of the sites which links to us now have over 101,000 backlinks pointing to us, when in reality it should only have 300-600. We have check the websites have not been hacked, with hidden links etc, but we can not find any. Has anyone else experienced problems with Google webmaster tools lately, displaying way too many links? Or could this be a negative SEO attack, which is yet to emerge. Thanks Rob
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tomfifteen0 -
Remove Google penalty or make a new website, Which is better??
My local website was hit by google and I have done all steps to remove the penalty, But it's still not ranked. So it is better to make a new website with new content and start working on it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Dan_Brown10 -
Is it worth redirecting an old domain name which was hacked to my new website?
I had a website which got hacked and malware added to it. I have since closed that website down but I still have the domain name. That domain name prior to the malware was incredibly well ranking for its niche and had a good range of high quality links to it and a domain age of 6 years. I'm now creating a new website which is similar to the old one (the same but with a different platform and layout). Is it a good or bad idea to redirect the old domain name to the new website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | james.rose0 -
SEO Best Practice for a multi-language and multi-country website
Hello Moz Community, I hope someone could help me identify the best action to take on an on-page optimization confusion I am currently having. The website I am currently trying to optimize is http://www.riafinancial.com/locations/us/home.aspx. There is an option to view a country specific version of the page, or language version (there are 2 drop down menus on the top, for country or for language). When viewing a country specific version of the page, the URL changes depending on country selected. Some country versions also updates the content to the language of that country, but some remain English. Example, when viewing the France version of the page (http://www.riafinancial.com/locations/FR/home.aspx), the content is updated to french version, but when viewing the China version (http://www.riafinancial.com/locations/CN/home.aspx), the content is in English. This is because we have not yet translated for all countries (this will eventually be all translated). Now, when viewing by language, the URL does NOT change. Example, in http://www.riafinancial.com/locations/us/home.aspx, you can choose French, German, Italian, Polish, etc. The content of the page will change based on language chosen, but the URL (including page titles, meta-descriptions) will not change. My question is, how should I approach this for on-page optimization? Canonical? Hreflang? Any input, feedback, recommendation, suggestion will be greatly appreciated. Thanks! Sharon
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RiaMT0 -
Google Places, Multiple locations best practice
What is the best practice with having multiple locations in Google Places. Does having multiple Google Places set up for each business have a big effect on local rankings for the individual areas? Should I use the home page for the website listed on each page or is it better to have a specific landing page for each Google Places listing? Any other tips? Thanks, Daniel
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iSenseWebSolutions0 -
Migrating a site with new URL structure
I recently redesigned a website that is now in WordPress. It was previously in some odd, custom platform that didn't work very well. The URL's for all the pages are now more search engine friendly and more concise. The problem is, now Google has all of the old pages and all of the new pages in its index. This is a duplicate problem since content is the same. I have set up a 301 redirect for every old URL to it's new counterpart. I was going to do a remove URL request in Webmaster Tools but it seems I need to have a 404 code and not a 301 on those pages to do that. Which is better to do to get the old URL's out of the index? 404 them and do a removal request or 301 them to the new URL? How long will it take Google to find these 301 redirects and keep just the new pages in the index?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DanDeceuster0