Large Site - Complete Site URL Change and How to Preserver Organic Rankings/Traffic
-
Hello Community,
What is your experience with site redesign when it comes to preserving the traffic? If a large enterprise website has to go through a site-wide enhancement (resulting in change of all URLs and partial content), what do you expect from Organic rankings and traffic? I assume we will experience a period that Google needs to "re-orientate" itself with the new site, if so, do you have similar experience and tips on how to minimize the traffic loss?
Thanks
-
Thank you all. 301 is definitely the plan. As Andy pointed out - to "predict" how Google will react to the change even with a comprehensive 301 effort is a miss and hit exercise.
-
As Andy/Steve were pointing out--the key is to as many redirects as possible (ideally all of them). On a large enterprise website this is extremely tedious and resource intensive and most people fall in the trap of just redirecting all pages that had more than x amount of visits in the last year. Unfortunately, the majority of your traffic is the long tail traffic that may be under this threshold and traffics drops after migration.
As for Organic rankings, there is a small decay factor using 301's.
-
Hi,
As I understand it you'll need to map all the old URLs to the New URLs with a set of 301 redirects.
This will tell google that the old page has permanently moved to the new location. You should get all the rank juice but I think you may loose a little.
Hope that helps
Steve
EDIT - I was writing my response while Andy was posting his...
-
The first thing to remember is to point all old pages to the new ones using 301's. Am I right in thinking that the basic content for each page will stay the same? If so, that is quite straight forward.
If you are removing pages altogether, then try to find the best matches for a redirect. Doing this should minimize any loss.
As to what Google will think, that is a little awkward to second guess. Sometimes there are no issues and the site will just carry on, other times you may see a drop or rise in the SERP's. No easy way to determine this.
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
-
Website Not Ranking Organically - Not Links, Not Domain Authority...
This is regarding the domain: http://lesliekays.com We got a new client about 5 months back who had a website that was hacked. It took several months, but we've cleaned up most of the spammy links and completely rebuilt their website. We have been successful with every other client that we have ever done getting our customers to rank well organically, but we just can't figure this one out. I'm willing to offer a REWARD to the single person who can figure this out for us. (Let's not get carried away, a small reward). This customer has great quality links to their site too. We are looking for answers other than: 1. Backlinks 2. Content 3. Malware 4. Domain or Page authority 5. 404 errors 6. We have utilized Googles Webmaster tools endlessly It is something else and we can not identify it! Let me know what you think! I will give a public shout out to the person who helps us identify this issue!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tosten0 -
New site. How important is traffic for a new site? And what about domain age?
Hi guys. I've been building a new site because i've seen a real SEO opportunity out there. I'm a mixing professional by trade and so I wanted to take advantage of SEO to help gain more work. Here's the site: www.signalchainstudios.co.uk I'm curious about domain age. This site fairly well optimised for my keywords, and my site got pretty good content on it (i think so anyway). But it's no where to be seen on the SERP's (link at all). Is this just a domain age issue? I'd have though it might be in the top 50 because my site's services are not hard to rank for at all! Also what about traffic? Does Google want to see an 'active' site before it considers 'promoting' it up the ranks? Or are back links and good content the main factor in the equation? Thanks in advance. I love this community to bits 🙂 Isaac.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | isaac6631 -
Change url structure and keeping the social media likes/shares
Hi guys, We're thinking of changing the url structure of the tutorials (we call it knowledgebase) section on our website. We want to make it shorter URL so it be closer to the TLD. So, for the convenience we'll call them old page (www.domain.com/profiles/profile_id/kb/article_title) and new page (www.domain.com/kb/article_title) What I'm looking to do is change the url structure but keep the likes/shares we got from facebook. I thought of two ways to do it and would love to hear what the community members thinks is better. 1. Use rel=canonical I thought we might do a rel=canonical to the new page and add a "noindex" tag to the old page. In that way, the users will still be able to reach the old page, but the juice will still link to the new page and the old pages will disappear from Google SERP and the new pages will start to appear. I understand it will be pretty long process. But that's the only way likes will stay 2. Play with the og:url property Do the 301 redirect to the new page, but changing the og:url property inside that page to the old page url. It's a bit more tricky but might work. What do you think? Which way is better, or maybe there is a better way I'm not familiar with yet? Thanks so much for your help! Shaqd
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ShaqD0 -
One site two languages - what to do with urls?
Hi, We are working with a client who has a Spanish site which is in English and Spanish, what is the best url structure to go for? www.domain.es and en.domain.es or www.domain.es and www.domain.es/en or none of the above?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | J_Sinclair0 -
Can a Hosting provider that also hosts adult content sites negatively affect our SEO rankings on a non-adult site hosted on same platform?
We're considering moving a site to a host that also offers hosting for adult websites. Can this have a negative affect on SEO, if our hosting company is in any way associated with adult websites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | grapevinemktg0 -
How to increase the page rank for keyword for entire site
sorry for my bad english is there any way to increase the ranking for a keyword for the entire site .i know that seo is done per page basis .my site contains 1000ds of posts and i cant get back links for each and every post .so i picked 4 keywords which are mostly used while searching my products , is there any method i can increase my ranking for those keywords like increasing domain authority EXAMPLE :like if i want to increase my ranking for "buy laptop" .if any user searches In google with buy laptop i want my site or any of related pages that match the user search query must show up in front
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | prakash.moturu0 -
Registry changes: Negative impact on organic rankings?
A client's site ranks very well for extremely competitive terms. The google rankings have been stable for over a year. There has been an organizational shake up, and the 'registrant' and administrative/billing/technical contact info needs to be updated, including the physical address. I have been hesitant to modify the information for risk of a negative impact on the rankings. Will changes to the registrant/contacts/address info at the registrar have a negative impact on current organic rankings? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seagreen
Greg0 -
I have a .com site but I am only ranking good on google for Canada and not the USA.
We are located in Canada but sell our products world wide. We are ranking ok on google.ca but are not in the top 50 on google.com. Is it due to my ip address? Is there any tips that you can give me to help up my rating for google.com. Any info you can provide me with will be amazing. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | drewzal0