SEO Considerations for a Platform Change
-
We are getting ready to move our e-commerce platform from Zencart to Magento as the original Zencart framework is pretty dated. while I'm excited to move to a more modern platform, I'm terrified at the potential SEO risk involved with doing so given that all URLs will likely be different and we're considering updating many product listings. Almost all of the site's traffic is organic, so maintaining rankings is extremely important.
I'd love any advice, but especially that related to:
-
Best way to redirect all new URLs sitewide
-
The prudence of heavily editing product listings at the same time of redirecting the URL (i.e. updating product descriptions)
-
Site structure: Should I strive to keep the new site link structure as similar to the old as possible?
-
Resources or guides on transitioning a site from a SEO perspective
-
Other major facets I'm missing
I appreciate any help or sights you can offer! Thank you....
-
-
I'd say to start with an excel spreadsheet and then copy them all over in one big batch. You're probably going to need some coffee.
At the very least, you should keep the redirects there for 6 months. If you drop the 301's then you also lose the inbound links, so it's best to keep them there as long as possible.
-
Bryce,
Thanks for your reply! A follow-up question:
Is the best way to do 300+ page-to-page redirects simply by entering them all into the .htacess file? If so, how long do I need to keep these .htaccess redirects available? Once Google indexes them, and indexes the redirects, will they be permanently stored in the Google cache? Or should I leave them permanently just in case?
-
1) Best way to redirect all new URLs sitewide
Page to Page redirects is the best solution, even though it's a major pain. I would take a look at your traffic data for at least the past 90 days, possibly even further, and create a 301 map from every page with inbound traffic to the correlating page on the new site.
2) The prudence of heavily editing product listings at the same time of redirecting the URL (i.e. updating product descriptions)
If you're up to it. However if rankings drop then you won't be able to track it back to a particular change.
3) Site structure: Should I strive to keep the new site link structure as similar to the old as possible?
If the current site structure converts well, then maybe you should stick with it. The nice thing about switching to a new platform is it's a great opportunity to reinvent your site if you feel like it needs it.
4) Resources or guides on transitioning a site from a SEO perspective
This article might be a little dated, but it should point you in the right direction. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-things-relaunch-your-website
Good luck!
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
-
Do SEOs really need to care about trend in increase of voice search?
Hi all, Just browsing through the articles like "SEO trends in 2108"....I can see everyone mention about increase in voice search and attributing same to the SEO at top. But there is very less information on how to optimise for voice search....May be, they don't know what SEOs have to do exactly with voice search. Basically the input method is going to change on search and else remains same. This must be leading to increase of long tail searches and more search snippets to give an instant voice answer. What else has to be optimised to favoured in voice search? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz2 -
We believe we accomplished an SEO Parallax site with a nice balance. Can the MOZ community critique this site from an SEO perspective?
Our goal was to accomplish a site that has parallax scrolling and great onsite optimization. We noticed that most Awwward winning sites www.awwwards.com have great parallax scrolling but no SEO. Can the MOZ community critique this site from an SEO perspective? (Note this site was optimized for Chrome or Firefox. If you are using IE, you will be redirected to the old site.) www.posicionamientowebenbuscadores.com Note the site is in BETA still. It has the following technologies CSS3 HTML5 REsponsive Wordpress Parallax Scrolling Onsite Optimization (SEO) No mobile (ran out of funds...)
Web Design | | Carla_Dawson0 -
Does Using Magento With Multi Sites Affect SEO
We have a client who has 3 separate websites targeting the US, Australia, and the UK. Each of them has relevant ccTLD's such as: .com .com.au and .co.uk. Our client wants to use the Magento multi-site function so it combines all the stores (which are the exact same products) and merge it into one through Magento. These sites are all hosted in the US and had nothing to do with me haha! I understand Rand has mentioned on a video it would be best having the websites with ccTLD's hosted in that country (if budget permits), however in this case the budget doesn't permit us to go down that road. Has anyone any advice on this matter, has anyone did this before and had a lot of success with the SEO? At present there doesn't seem to be a lot of information about it and opinions are varied and sometimes divided. Any help would be very much appreciated guys Thanks, Matt
Web Design | | HigherthanSEO0 -
Will changing our URL's to MVC friendly URL's have a positive or negative affect on our rankings and link juice?
We've recently changed our site over to a new hosting system, we've got similar pages and are now looking at changing the URL's to ensure we do not loose our link juice from our previous site. My question is regarding the URL's, is it worth us changing our URL's to MVC friendly URL have a good or bad affect on our rankings and or link juice? Thanks
Web Design | | SimonDixon0 -
What are some good places to read about SEO with Joomla CMS?
I recently was asked by a potential client to work with them on Joomla based website. I very rarely come across people with Joomla based websites and am struggling to find good resources outside of Joomla's own community site. At this point, I am not very comfortable working with them on Joomla. Any tips or advice?
Web Design | | GCSMasone0 -
Effects of HTML layout on Arabic websites and SEO
Hi all, I was hoping someone may be able to help. We are putting together an Arabic website and due to reading right to left as opposed to left to right, the site HTML layout is mirrored compared to normal with everything flipped over. What we are wondering is, will this effect SEO and what are the SEO implications of this? Do the search engine bots automaticlaly know to read the content etc differently and understand that everything is purposely mirrored / the HTML is in a different location compared to a site in the UK / US etc? Any help on this would be most appreciated. Cheers!
Web Design | | marcelo-2753980 -
The ideal SEO e-commerce site
Hi All, I am currently writing a spec for moving our current e-commerce website and it got me thinking from an SEO perspective. We are all usually restrained by the current website set-up / CMS and there are things it can never do despite how hard we push for the changes. If you had the chance to start from a blank canvas (like I do currently) what would be on your wishlist?
Web Design | | RikkiD220 -
Old SEO keyword "articles", are they hurting rankings?
Hello, About two years ago, the company I work for hired an SEO firm to improve organic rankings on our site. The SEO company's primary method for doing this was producing "articles" that are not really articles but keyword stuffed pages with lots of hidden, internal links to other legitimate pages on our site. Examples: http://www.creamright.com/Isi-Chargers-articles.html http://www.creamright.com/How-To-Make-Whipped-Cream-article.html http://www.creamright.com/Cream-Whipper-articles.html Obviously, this strategy wasn't greatly successful and we cancelled our work with the firm. However, we still have all of the "articles" on the site (about 50-60 pages total) and each page is navigable from the html and XML sitemaps. Additionally, the SEO firm we used built a lot of useless links to these pages from BS directory sites which are all still active. The question I have is whether we should remove these "article" pages or should leave them alone? Although I'm sure they aren't helping any of our SEO efforts, could deleting the pages after two years negatively impact our search rankings? Thanks in advance for any help on this, Doug M.
Web Design | | Loganshark1