Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Would it be better to Start Over vs doing a Website Migration?
-
Hey guys /gals
I have a question please. I have a computer repair business that does extremely well in search and is on the front page of google for anything computer repair related.
However, I am currently re-branding my company and have completely redesigned every aspect of the UI and the SEO Site structure as well as the fact that I have completely written vastly different content and different title tag lines and meta descriptions for each page.
So basically when doing a migration we know that we want to keep our content, titles, headlines and meta descriptions the same as to not lose our page rank.
Seeing that I have completely went against the grain in all directions on a much needed company re-branding and everything is completely different from the old site is it even worthwhile 301 redirecting my old urls to the new ones that would (best) correspond with the new?
In the plainest English, would I do better at Ranking the New Website QUICKER without doing 301 redirects from the OLD to the NEW?
In an EXTREME instance like what I have done, would the Domain Migration IMPEDED me ranking the new site seeing how nothing is the same?
I have build a Rock solid SILO Site Architecture on the New site which is WordPress using the Thesis Framework and the old domain is built on JOOMLA 1.5
Thank fellas
Marshall
-
Hey thanks Keri and how are you?
-
Moz has recently had a little bit of experience with a rebrand, changing domains, changing URLs, implementing redirects, and a variety of other fun things to keep us busy. Ruth Burr, our in-house SEO, is giving a Mozinar that talks in-depth about this migration on Thursday, with a chance for you to ask questions at the end. If you're not able to attend the webinar, we'll have it online for download within two days.
You can reserve your spot at http://moz.com/webinars, as well as see all the past webinars we've done, and what else is scheduled in the future.
-
Hi Marshall,
one resource I think is very valuable regardless of if someone is new or have been doing it for long time this is a great search engine optimization is this guide please do not think that I am giving you this because I think you are a beginner I know you are not. And I agree with you Google has made things kind of nuts in the last 3 to 5 years.
http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo
It is definitely the right place to start if you are just picking up after a couple years off.
Sincerely,
Thomas
-
Thanks gents and figured as much.
I had to ask though. Although I am very good at SEO and coding and everything else, that means moot if you are not current with the recent GOOGLE drama that has been punishing everyone for the last 2 years now.
3-5 years ago, I could build a site and rank it on the first page for pretty much everything without even doing any back link building but...once again.. we are talking 5 years ago when things were a lot different and a lot less harder too.
Never hurts to ask the folks that do this stuff for their primary source of income know what I mean fellas?
Thanks once again to all of you for your responses to my question.
Sincerely,
Marshall : )
-
Just like the 2 suggestions, it's really best to keep both sites. Move forward with the new site and re-brand your company but don't scrap the original website. Add a banner, write up, some news explaining the re-brand and point the original site to the new site. You'll create a backlink and if the person is genuinely interested in what you have to offer, they'll follow to the new website.
301 any page that are relevant from the original site to the new site. If both sites have a products page then you can point it over. Google will naturally figure out what you did and start passing any relevant benefits to the new site.
-
Hi Marshall,
You're rebuilding your current website in WordPress using thesis framework. And you're asking basically if you you should do 301 redirects or not?
Absolutely you should do 301 redirects if you want to keep any part of your rank which sounds like it is doing pretty good. I would feel when redirect every page to the new page that has taken it's place. Also for word press I would strongly recommend using manage WordPress hosting
WP engine, zippykid, web synthesis, and Pagely are excellent choices.
I hope I've been of help,
Thomas
-
Please...dear God don't scrap your website (especially if you are ranking well for it). Even if the content is completely different, figure out where to redirect your legacy pages to and use 301 redirects. Just make sure that you are doing one to one redirects to maintain as much of your link equity as possible. Sorry for such a short and simple response to your long question, but this only required a simple answer. If you are offering the same products or services create a massive .htaccess file and redirect the hell out of your old site.
You owe me a Coke.
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
-
Why is Amazon crawling my website? Is this hurting us?
Hi mozzers, I discovered that Amazon is crawling our site and exploring thousands of profile pages. In a single day it crawled 75k profile pages. Is this related to AWS? Is this something we should worry about or not? If so what could be a solution to counter this? Could this affect our Google Analytics organic traffic?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ty19860 -
If my website uses CDN does thousands of 301 redirect can harm the website performance?
Hi, If my website uses CDN does thousands of 301 redirect can harm the website performance? Thanks Roy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kadut1 -
Top hierarchy pages vs footer links vs header links
Hi All, We want to change some of the linking structure on our website. I think we are repeating some non-important pages at footer menu. So I want to move them as second hierarchy level pages and bring some important pages at footer menu. But I have confusion which pages will get more influence: Top menu or bottom menu or normal pages? What is the best place to link non-important pages; so the link juice will not get diluted by passing through these. And what is the right place for "keyword-pages" which must influence our rankings for such keywords? Again one thing to notice here is we cannot highlight pages which are created in keyword perspective in top menu. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
How to rank my website in Google UK?
Hi guys, I own a London based rubbish removal company, but don't have enough jobs. I know for sure that some of my competitors get most of their jobs trough Google searches. I also have a website, but don't receive calls from it at all. Can you please tell me how to rank my website on keywords like: "rubbish removal london", "waste clearance london", "junk collection london" and other similar keywords? I know that for person like me (without much experience in online marketing) will be difficult task to optimize the website, but at least - I need some advices from where to start. I'm also thinking to hire an SEO but not sure where to find a trusted company. Most importantly I have no idea how much should pay to expect good results? What is too much and what is too low? I will appreciate all advices.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gorubbishgo0 -
Website completely delisted - reasons?
Hi, I got a request from a potential client as he do not understand why his website cannot be found on Google. I've checked that and found out that the complete website is not listed (complete delist) at all - expect just one pdf file.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheHecksler
I've checked his robots.txt - but this is ok. I've checked the META Robots - but they are on index,follow ... ok so far. I've checked his backlinks but could not found any massive linking from bad pages - just 6 backlinks and only four of them from designdomains.com which looks like a linklist or so. I've requested access to their GWT account if available in hope to find more infos, but does anyone of you may have a quick idea what els it could be? What could be the issue? I think that they got delisted due to any bad reason ... Let me know your Ideas 🙂 THANX 🙂 Sebi0 -
Credit Links on Client Websites
I know there have been several people who have asked this but a lot of them were back in 2012 before many of the google changes. My question is the same though. With all the changes with Google's algorithm. Is it okay to put your link on the bottom of your clients website. Like Web Design by, etc. Part of the reason is to drive traffic but also if someone is actually interested who designed the website, they will click it. But now reading about how bad links can hurt you tremendously, it makes me second guess if this is ok. My gut feeling says, no.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | blackrino0 -
Location.href vs href?
I just got off a Google Hangout with John Mueller and was left a little confused about his response to my question. If I have an internal link in a div like widgetwill it have the same SEO impact as widget John said that as you are unable to attribute a nofollow in an onclick event it would be treated as a naked link and would not pass pagerank but still be crawled. Can anyone confirm that I understood it correctly? If so should all my links that have such an onclickevent also have an html ahref in the too? Such as widget Many times it is more useful for the customer to click on any area of a large div and not just the link to get to the destination intended? Clarification on this subject would be very useful, there is nothing easily found online to confirm this. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gazzerman10 -
Splitting one Website into 2 Different New Websites with 301 redirects, help?
Here's the deal. My website stbands.com does fairly well. The only issue it is facing a long term branding crisis. It sells custom products and sporting goods. We decided that we want to make a sporting goods website for the retail stuff and then a custom site only focusing on the custom stuff. One website transformed and broken into 2 new ones, with two new brand names. The way we are thinking about doing this is doing a lot of 301 redirects, but what do we do with the homepage (stbands.com) and what is the best practice to make sure we don't lose traffic to the categories, etc.? Which new website do we 301 the homepage to? It's rough because for some keywords we rank 3 or 4 times on the first page. Scary times, but something must be done for the long term. Any advise is greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance. We are set for a busy next few months 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Hyrule0
