Delay release of content or fix after release
-
I am in the midst of moving my site to a new platform. As part of that I am reviewing each and every article for SEO - titles, URLs, content, formatting/structure, etc, etc. I have about 200 articles to move across and my eventual plan is to look at each article and update for these factors.
I have all the old content moved across to the new server as-is (the old server is still the one to which my domain's DNS records point). At a high level I have two choice:
- Point DNS to the new server, which will expose the same content (which isn't particularly SEO-friendly) and then work through each article, fixing the various elements to make them more user friendly.
- Go through each article, fixing content, structure, etc and THEN update DNS to point to the new server.
Obviously the second option adds time before I can switch across. I'd estimate it will take me a few weeks to get through the articles. Option 1 allows me to switch pretty soon and then start going through the articles and updating them.
An important point here is the new articles already have new (SEO-friendly) URLs and titles on the new server. I have 301 redirections in place pointing from the old to new URLs. So, it's "only" the content of each article that will be changing on the new server, rather than the URLs, etc.
So, I'd be interested in any suggestions on the best approach - move across to the new server now and then fix content or wait till all the content is done and then switch to the new server.
Thanks.
Mark
-
I would definitely at least clean up the article HTML and structure before launching the pages, since you don't want people who might land on them before they're updated to have a weird experience. As far as optimizing them for SEO, I think you could go ahead and make the pages live and roll out edits as you make them. Prioritizing the pages based on highest-traffic/best-converting first is the way to go. If switching your platform is going to make your site easier to crawl, you definitely want to do that sooner rather than later - plus, having the new pages live will allow them to start accumulating some links even before you make keyword-related changes.
In general with a major change like this I recommend changing as few other things as possible simultaneously. It's OK to make more gradual changes, and it gives Google fewer things to get used to at one time.
-
If search engines did not catch up with changes we make and improve our ranking for positive changes, there'd be little point to Search Engine Optimization.
If Google is already seeing your pages anyway and the move will only make them better (even if they are still not where you'd like them to be), then you can go ahead and move them if you like, as long as the move will not create a confusing situation for the people looking at the pages.
As you fix the pages to your satisfaction, wait for them to be crawled again or resubmit them using Fetch as Google to possibly get them crawled faster. [And as far as H2 tags, if that is your main worry, I wouldn't worry too much--they probably won't make much difference.]
-
Thank you for the response, Linda. So, this is a slightly tricky one because I don't have a specific deadline per se, but also want to build a plan that gets me over to the new server as soon as possible, without falling into a trap of the switchover date just "floating". Let me put it this way.
I have the following "phases" for each of the articles (as reminder, I have around 200 such articles):
- Create all articles: Using the planned titles, categories and URLs but with no content.
- Move content across from old site to the new articles. Done with straight cut-and-paste (don't ask about importing - long story :)). This gets the data into WordPress posts as-is, but includes HTML markup from the old CMS, doesn't correctly use styles (some articles look pretty messy) and doesn't have a consistent use of H2 tags (H1 is the title). Most articles look "OK" but a) some are messy but readable for the human eye and b) the lack of H2 tags means there's no structure from an SEO-perspective.
- Clean up article HTML/structure. Review each article, cleaning up the HTML and ensuring the content still makes sense and reads well. HTML clean-up includes removing HTML relevant to the old CMS and making sure I have article structure through use of H2 tags
- Review each article for SEO. Will be using the Yoast SEO plugin and making changes recommended. The keywords are already decided (the URLs and titles in step 1 reflect those decisions) so for each article I will be reviewing the rest of the content and making sure it looks acceptable from an SEO perspective,
I am currently done with step 2 (all articles moved across, albeit some looking somewhat untidy and without any document structure). I am starting to work through step 3 now, but this is a time-consuming process.
I guess what this all boils down to is if I switch across will search engines "catch up" later, when I revise the content for structure and SEO changes. The existing site is not good - so, as it stands, search engines don't look on the site kindly.
One option is to just bite the bullet and move across (I'd see benefits from the title and URL changes, with the associated 301 redirects in place) and subsequently do steps 3 and 4. I'd actually like to do that but ONLY if I can be confident the search engines will end up in the same place as they would if I just waited till step 4 is done.
Another option is to finish step 3, move to the new server and then start updating articles for SEO (step 4).
Thanks.
Mark
-
Why are you switching? If there is no reason to be in a rush, then I'd wait and make the change when everything is ready--a few weeks isn't that long.
If there is a particular reason for haste (like you were having technical problems with the old platform or a lot of your traffic is mobile and you want to make the April 21 Google deadline), then I think it depends on the state of the content.
If it is not perfect but still makes sense with the new titles and URLs, I'd do the update for your most important content and switch. If it is terrible, I'd wait. There is no point getting traffic for bad content.
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
-
Duplicate content across different domains
Hi Guys, Looking for some advice regarding duplicate content across different domains. I have reviewed some previous Q&A on this topic e.g. https://mza.seotoolninja.com/community/q/two-different-domains-exact-same-content but just want to confirm if I'm missing anything. Basically, we have a client which has 1 site (call this site A) which has solids rankings. They have decided to build a new site (site B), which contains 50% duplicate pages and content from site A. Our recommendation to them was to make the content on site B as unique as possible but they want to launch asap, so not enough time. They will eventually transfer over to unique content on the website but in the short-term, it will be duplicate content. John Mueller from Google has said several times that there is no duplicate content penalty. So assuming this is correct site A should be fine, no ranking losses. Any disagree with this? Assuming we don't want to leave this to chance or assume John Mueller is correct would the next best thing to do is setup rel canonical tags between site A and site B on the pages with duplicate content? Then once we have unique content ready, execute that content on the site and remove the canonical tags. Any suggestions or advice would be very much appreciated! Cheers, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
Translated Content on Country Domains
Hi, We have blogs set up in each of our markets, for example http://blog.telefleurs.fr, http://blog.euroflorist.nl and http://blog.euroflorist.be/nl. Each blog is localized correctly so FR has fr-FR, NL has nl-NL and BE has nl-BE and fr-BE. All our content is created or translated by our Content Managers. The question is - is it safe for us to use a piece of content on Telefleurs.fr and the French translated Euroflorist.be/fr, or Dutch content on Euroflorist.nl and Euroflorist.be/nl? We want to avoid canonicalising as neither site will take preference. Is there a solution I've missed until now? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoeuroflorist
Sam0 -
301 Redirects... Redirect all content at once or in increments?
Hello, I have been reading a lot about site migration and 301s and sometimes get confused with conflicting suggestions from different sources... So, in a site migration. Should I 301 redirect all old URLs to the news at once or little by little? I've see this Google handout that suggests doing it all at once (minute 13)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Koki.Mourao
https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/cfco632lor7bl55j3tg1g8332l0 But also have read the opposite in other forums...0 -
Content Internal Linking ?
Should we internally link new content to old content using anchor tags (keywords) related to pages from all new blogposts or should be keep rotating the blogposts like link from some blog posts & not from others. What ratio should we maintain. Right now i keep 2 links maximum from a 300 words posts or 3 in 500 words posts maximum. But linking from each new blog posts will be good?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | welcomecure0 -
User generated content (Comments) - What impact do they have?
Hello MOZ stars! I have a question regarding user comments on article pages. I know that user generated content is good for SEO, but how much impact does it really have? For your information:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | idg-sweden
1 - All comments appears in source code and is crawled by spiders.
2 - A visitor can comment a page for up to 60 days.
3 - The amount of comments depends on the topic, we usually gets between 3-40 comments. My question:
1 - If we were to remove comments completely, what impact would it have from seo perspective? (I know you cant be certain - but please make an educated guess if possible)
2 - If it has a negative and-/or positive impact please specify why! 🙂 If anything is unclear or you want certain information don't hesitate to ask and I'll try to specify. Best regards,
Danne0 -
Understanding how to fix a 403 issue with my website
Hi guys, I hope you can help solve a mystery for me! My site FranceForFamilies.com has been around for 9 years and has always ranked well - at least until I launched a new Wordpress version earlier this year. The purpose of the relaunch was to improve the look of the site, so I kept the content and meta titles the same but created a new design. However, from the day of the new launch the search engine rankings have plummeted, to the point where most seem to have disappeared all together. I have found that when Moz crawls the site, it only crawls one page. I asked the Moz team about this and they said that the site is returning a 403. They also tested this using a curl and received a 406 response: curl -I www.franceforfamilies.com/ HTTP/1.1 406 Not Acceptable However, when I check our Google Webmaster tools I can't recreate the issue. I don't really know what is going on, and I don't have the technical knowledge to solve this - can you help? Thanks, Daniel
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LeDanJohnson0 -
Image and Content Management
My boss has decided that on our new website we are building, that he wants all content and images managed by not allowing copying content and/or saving images. Some of the information and images is proprietary, yet most is available for public viewing, but never the less, he wants it prohibited from copy and/or saving. We would still want to keep the content indexable and use appropriate alt tags etc... I wanted to find out if there is any SEO reason and facts to why this would not be a good idea?Would implementing code to prohibit (or at least make it difficult) to save images and copy content, penalize us?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KJ-Rodgers0 -
Duplicate page content
Hi. I am getting error of having duplicate content on my website and pages its showing there are: www.mysitename.com www.mysitename.com/index.html As my best knowledge it only one page, I know this can be solved with some conical tag used in header, but do not know how. Can anyone please tell me about that code or any other way to get this solved. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onlinetraffic0