Effects of a long-term holding page/503 http code whilst site is being rebranded?
-
We have a client who is adamant that during the rebranding of their company and website, a holding page is put in place from August 5<sup>th</sup> till go-live date on August 21<sup>st</sup>.
They don’t look like budging on the matter, therefore we are looking to set up a 503 HTTP code on the holding page to tell Google the site is down for maintenance and redirect all pages back to the holding page.
The general consensus is that implementing this for such a long period of time will see Google de-index all pages and the site will lose masses of traffic as a result for a substantial time afterwards.
It would be great to get some insight on best practice for this situation, how Google will determine the situation and the consequences of such actions.
If you have any case studies of similar situations or have firm knowledge of how this scenario would affect the site, I would be delighted to hear from you!
-
Hi Matt,
Unless I'm misunderstanding you, that sounds like a pretty successful implementation to me - it makes total sense to me that Google would temporarily de-index your site if it was returning a 503; after all, there was nowhere for a user to go. The fact that you've been able to gain back your rankings afterward means that Google understood what was going on and didn't ding you for having a "broken" site, which is what the goal of this process should be.
Perhaps I'm not understanding your goals? If you want the holding/home page to stay indexed, then yes, a 200 response code is what that page should be returning - Google tries not to send traffic to pages consistently returning a 503. In your original question it sounded like you wanted to let Google know that the site was down for maintenance, but would return, in which case a 503 is really your best bet.
-
We found some negative effects of implementing the above, unfortunately.
Our process was:
- Implement the holding page and place a 503 HTTP status into the header for the page, along with a come back later date when the site would be live again.
- 302 every other page to the homepage (holding page).
- The Robots was removed in this process.
- Found that the homepage had been de-indexed - reinstated the Robots file with no disallow restrictions.
- Still couldn't raise the site through branded search terms and returned the homepage back to a 200, indexed the page again in WMT and used social media to boost this process.
- The homepage is now showing where it was before on the first page for branded terms.
We feel we didn't do anything wrong and wondered if anyone had any ideas if there were any errors in our process?
Cheers,
Matt.
-
Hi Ruth,
Thanks for the response. The multiple 302 in combination with a 503 seems like the best way to go. I'll check out the yoast post, hadn't thought about adding a 503 to the robots.txt as well.
Matt
-
Hi Matt,
I think setting up a 503 HTTP code on the holding page and then using 302 redirects to point all pages to that page is a viable option. You could also consider having every page return a 503 error (make sure your robots.txt page does, as that will keep the search engines from continuing to crawl). The pages on the site will most likely fall out of the index while you're returning a 503, but that's OK since there won't be anything for your users to find anyway.
The key here is to add a Retry-After header with the GMT date and time your site will be available. That lets Google know when to come back and that the site isn't actually down/returning a 503 forever. Yoast has a great post on this at http://yoast.com/http-503-site-maintenance-seo/ which I'd recommend checking out.
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
-
How Google decide reading time of a page?
Dear friends, I have a question. How google decide bounce rate? For an example- I open a website through organic keyword from Google. Now I have tab of landing page in browser I do not close this tab for 10 minutes and continue doing my other things after some time I come back on that tab and close. Can Google know? This page has been read till 10 minutes. Can Google decide the bounce rate for this session? If I do some click boost for my negative reviews can I do same thing in my website? Is it useful? If I open one tab and come back after one day than what happen? Silly question but confusing me so please help me. I will be very grateful to you! Thanks all
Branding | | docbeans0 -
Rebranding: How Can We Continue to Be Found by Searching the Old Name?
Our company was acquired and we are working toward an entire re-brand, including name change and new url. We plan to appropriately 301 redirect the old site to the correct pages on the news site, etc. The question is, if users continue to search the old company name on search engines, will it appear in SERPs for the new site? I'm guessing that our company name is associated to the old url and will that pass along the branded company name to the new url? My thoughts are to include the old company name in the sitemap.htm file and in the About Us section, particularly in the news release when the change occurs. Aside from that idea is to include social posts on G+, LinkedIn, our Blog, and Twitter as appropriate talking about the name change, all linking to the new website. Any input would be most appreciated!
Branding | | Prospector-Plastics0 -
Rebranding for Local SEO
I'm preparing to begin a rebranding project for a client who is changing their brand name, logo and primary domain name. They have dozens of locations (some that accept walk-in customers, and some that don't). What's the best place to get started? Once their rebranded website is published, should third-party sources like Acxiom & Localeze be addressed first, then move to Google+ Local, Bing Places, Yahoo Local, etc.? Is using schema for local business and the new company logo on their website a must-do action item? Just trying to be proactive & figure out the best process in order to maximize cost and time efficiency. Thank you.
Branding | | BT2110 -
Page Title restructuring
Hey Mozers! Surely you have noticed Google has been randomly restructuring our Page Titles to emphasize branding by placing the company/brand first, as opposed to after the "|" - a convention we had been accustomed to. I am wondering if the aforementioned warrants restructuring our client's (where branding is important) Page Titles as per Google's lead, or simply staying on the sidelines for now and letting Google do it? Anyone care to share their take on this? Thanks! Dino
Branding | | SCW0 -
What are some good ways to market a used car sales site?
I have thought of using craigslist and other classified ads, social media and of course good old SEO. What else can be done to drive traffic to a used car website?
Branding | | MangoMan160 -
How to increase page authority and domain authority? [Ecommerce]
How can I increase my Ecommerces Domain and Homepage Authority? My competition have 60-70 page Authority and it's time I try to compete.
Branding | | InkCartridgesFast0 -
Facebook, Google Plus - What to share/like?
Hi everybody! We are planning to offer an incentive to all our customers who interact with us on social media websites. What's the most important thing to ask from a customer? Facebook to like our Facebook business page or to like our own website through Facebook? to just follow us on Facebook or to actually comment / interact on our wall? Google + to +1, share, add to circle our Google+ business webpage or to +1 or share our own website? So basically what do we need to promote most? Our Facebook / Google+ business pages or our own website through social media marketing? While we understand it's important to actually interact with the customers and offer value on social media websites, we are looking to boost our SEO efforts. Thank you!
Branding | | echo10 -
Should we have customers like our URL or our Facebook brand page?
(Note: main question in bold) I know this post basically establishes that Facebook shares are not a strong cause of increased rankings. But what about likes? I've searched and read through the forum and YouMoz blog but haven't really found this question answered. We just redesigned our site and we're implementing sharing options in the booking and order completion processes - should we point the Facebook Like button to like our URL or our Facebook brand page (currently with 3,800+ likes)? Seems that a like of the URL would be more direct ranking value (what we're going for), but according to that same post mentioned above, Google doesn't crawl or index FB wall pages... so is all Facebook activity - shares, url likes, brand page likes - for naught? (at least for now, till Google starts using that info)
Branding | | DanielH0