New web site - 404 and 301
-
Hello,
I have spent a lot of times on the forum trying to make sure how to deal with my client situation. I will tell you my understanding of the strategy to apply and I would appreciate if you could tell me if the strategy will be okay.
CONTEXT
I am working on a project where our client wants to replace its current web site with a new one. The current web site has at least 100 000 pages. The new web site will replace all the existing pages of the current site.
What I have heard for the strategy the client wants to adopt is to 404 each pages and to 301 redirect each page. Every page would be redirect to a page that make sense in the new web site.
But after reading other answers and reading the following comment, I am starting to be concerned:
'(4) Be careful with a massive number of 301s. I would not 301 100s of pages at once. There's some evidence Google may view this as aggressive PR sculpting and devalue those 301s. In that case, I'd 301 selectively (based on page authority and back-links) and 404 the rest.'
I have also read about performance issue ...
QUESTION
So, if we suppose that we can manage to map each of the old site pages to a page in the new web site, is a problem to do it? Do you see a performance issue or devaluation potential issue?
If it is a problem, please comment the strategy I might considere to suggest:
-
Identify the pages for which I gain links
-
From that group, identify the pages, that gives me most of my juice
-
301 redirect them and for the other, create a real great 404 ...
Thanks !
Nancy
-
-
yes. many have the belief that you are transfereing the value of the page, that not the case, you are redirected requests for that page. A user may reqest yiour page and be redirected to anouther, a search engine may request the page to assign link juice to it, and it will be redirected.
a good analogy is, if you and tom have a store, and tom puts a sign on his door, closed go to Nancy's store, you will get most of his customers, but you will not get the value of his stock.
OK you may have some customers that have your link bookmarked and for that reason you could 301 it, but I doubt that is a good enouth reason to 301 so many pages.
-
Thanks Alan for thIe answer. But maybe I was not clear but I don't believe the strattegy to all point to the same page. They will make their best to point each new page to a page matching the same content.
So in your mind, there is no purpose doing a 301 redirect to pages that have no inbound link, is that correct?
Thanks again !
-
i think you have understaood quite well.
Many people seem to think you 301 redirect the page and any worth it has, this is not the case, a 301 redirecet redirects the request to the page, so in short if the page has no in comming link juice then it does not need to be 301 redirected.
You are correct, do not 301 redirecet in mass to one page, Bing for one has said they will disssmiss them. You shouyld 301 on a one to one or close to it basis.
As for performace issue, it is true that you create a second request when a 301 is encaountered, but this should not be much of a issue.
As for your 404 page, make sure it actualy returns a 404.
Expect a drop in rankings as 301 redirectes leak link juice, This is often offset by better bullt new website. There will be a major short term drop also that will last a few weeks.
Good luck
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
-
Mobile First Index: What Could Happen To Sites w Large Desktop but Small Mobile Sites?
I have a question about how Mobile First could affect websites with separate (and smaller) mobile vs desktop sites. Referencing this SE Roundtable article (seorountable dot com /google-mobile-first-index-22953.html), "If you have less content on your mobile version than on your desktop version - Google will probably see the less content mobile version. Google said they are indexing the mobile version first." But Google/ Gary Illyes are also on the record stating the switch to mobile-first should be minimally disruptive. Does "Mobile First" mean that they'll consider desktop URLs "second", or will they actually just completely discount the desktop site in lieu of the mobile one? In other words: will content on your desktop site that does not appear in mobile count in desktop searches? I can't find clear answer anywhere (see also: /jlh-marketing dot com/mobile-first-unanswered-questions/). Obviously the writing is on the wall (and has been for years) that responsive is the way to go moving forward - but just looking for any other viewpoints/feedback here since it can be really expensive for some people to upgrade. I'm basically torn between "okay we gotta upgrade to responsive now" and "well, this may not be as critical as it seems". Sigh... Thanks in advance for any feedback and thoughts. LOL - I selected "there may not be a right answer to this question" when submitting this to the Moz community. 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mirabile0 -
Help, no organic traffic recovery after new site launch (it's been 6 months)!
I worked with a team of developers to launch a new site back in March. I was (and still am) in charge of SEO for the site, including combining 4 sites into 1. I made sure 301 redirects were in place to combine the sites and pretty much every SEO tactic I can think of to make sure the site would maintain rankings following launch. However, here we are 6 months later and YoY numbers are down -70% on average for organic traffic. Anyone mind taking a look at http://www.guestguidepublications.com and seeing if there's a glaring mistake I'm missing?!?!?! Thanks ahead of time!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Annapurna-Digital1 -
4000 new duplicate products on our ecommerce site, potential impact?
Hello, We've currently got 9500 products live on our site at the moment with ~2000 in this category that we're adding the new products in. All of these products we're adding are coming from a site that we own and we're trying to expand the range on our site (the 9500 product site has a lot more visitors than the 4000 product site). However, all these products imported I believe are atleast duplicates from the 4000 product site, but the first ones I have seen (500) are manufacturer duplicates. What issues are we potentially going to run in to? Just for extra information: We have no control over canonical/noindex/robots etc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ThomasHarvey0 -
New Domain VS New Page Backlink?
Assuming you've already got a link from:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sam.at.Moz
sitea.com/page1 (Moz domain rank 55, Moz page rank 30) You have two choices for another link: 1. Another link on the same domain but a new page:
sitea.com/page2 (Moz domain rank 55, Moz page rank 30) 2. A link on a new domain but with a lesser domain & page rank
siteb.com/page1 (Moz domain rank 30, Moz page rank 20) Assuming you have no other links to your site - both sites are relevant to your industry, both 5 years old, both have the same number of visitors/external links/ads and the content and anchor text remains the same. Which will have a bigger impact on SERP movements? Sam0 -
Why is my m-dot site outranking my main site in SERPs?
My client has a WP site and a Duda mobile site that we inherited. For some reason their m-dot site is ranking on P1 of Google for their top KWs instead of the main site which is much more robust. The main site might rank beyond page 5 when the generic home page for their m-dot site appears on P1. Does anyone have any idea why this might be happening?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Etna0 -
"Starting Over" With A New Domain & 301 Redirect
Hello, SEO Gurus. A client of mine appears to have been hit on a non-manual/algorithm penalty. The penalty appears to be Penguin-like, and the client never received any message (not that that means it wasn't manual). Prior to my working with her, she engaged in all kinds of SEO fornication: spammy links on link farms, shoddy article marketing, blog comment spam -- you name it. There are simply too many tens of thousands of these links to have removed. I've done some disavowal, but again, so much of the link work is spam. She is about to launch a new site, and I am tempted to simply encourage her to buy a new domain and start over. She competes in a niche B2B sector, so it is not terribly competitive, and with solid content and link earning, I think she'd be ok. Here's my question: If we were to 301 the old website to the new one, would the flow of page rank outperform any penalty associated with the site? (The old domain only has a PR of 2). Anyone like my idea of starting over, rather than trying to "recover?" I thank you all in advance for your time and attention. I don't take it for granted.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RCNOnlineMarketing0 -
SEO for one web site two domains
I have web site www.sxxxcafe.com and there is a another domain for the same like xxx.com .How can i use second domain for the same web site keeping SEO up and without loosing ranking .
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innofidelity0 -
Strategies to compete with a new domain/site
Hi all, What would be ( highlights ) your strategy in order to rank and compete with a new domain against competitors that have an average of 50% domain authority and around 2000 root domain linking to them, if you would start with a completely new website/domain? How long would you estimate the new site to be competitive? In the retail area. Working on it a month full time I would go with On page SEO off course, detailling each products and building the internal link structure Get back links, backlinks, backlinks and... backlinks... Build the social media network feed a blog Thanks for your input Considering working on the site for a month full time, I would estimate a ranking after a month or 2 although the competitions very high. Your thoughts ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Derek_A0