New Website Launch - what to do with the URLs of the pages with ranks
-
Hey there,
So, we are "redesigning" our website, it will have a new user journey and overall layout, use, and feel.
Situation: Previously, most of our keywords ranked over time organically though all of them pull up our domain.com as the landing page. Now that we are redesigning the site, most of the keywords pointing to the home page will now have their own page. Keywords properly grouped and content will now be on topic and focused per page.
Q: What are the things that we need to do so we won't lose those keywords?
Appreciate your help. Also, if you can cite specific SEO checklist when redesigning a site, that'll be a great help!
Thanks!
Jac
-
Hi Jac,
If you keep the content on your homepage quite similar to the existing homepage, you should normally be able to keep the rankings for the keywords that are currently generating traffic to your homepage. If everything goes well, Google should be able to figure out that for some keywords, other landing pages on your site are a better choice than just the home (although it's never a guarantee - just browse the q&a section and you'll find plenty of questions wondering why Google seems to prefer the home page rather than the skilfully crafted landing pages on the site)
rgds,
Dirk
-
Hello Dirk,
Thank you! Those were very helpful.
I have a ff up Q. What if, yes, given that right now, all keywords are 90% just pointing to homepage. Do I just pick the best ranking keywords and prolly just let go of the rest?
Jac
-
Hi,
You can find a good checklist here: https://moz.com/blog/web-site-migration-guide-tips-for-seos and you can find a bunch of other useful links here: https://moz.com/blog/achieving-an-seo-friendly-domain-migration-the-infographic - the lists are for migration of domains, but big chunks are also valid if you are just changing design/url structure.
The process described in the first list is (more or less) the one I use for site and/or design migrations.
If your current homepage is currently your principal landing page - I would try to make sure that it's doesn't change to much in terms of content & links to other sections. Also make sure that you check the performance of your homepage (it's also mentioned in the migration checklist) - I prefer to use webpagetest.org rather than pingdom.com - also check the page with Google page speed analyser.
Hope this helps,
Dirk
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
-
Phasing in new website on www2 domain - 301 plan
Hi, I work for a large company and we're planning to phase in a new website. The idea is to develop key journeys on the new site and serve them on a www2 domain, removing them from the old website which is served on the www domain. The reason for this is because the old website is over 2,000 pages, and the management want to see new, improved journeys sooner rather than later. So, rather than launching all new pages and journeys at the same time, which will take a long time to design and develop, key journeys will move across to the new site / design sooner and made available to visitors. Whilst the overall journey might be a bit disjointed in parts (i.e. sending people from old to new site, and vice versa) I can't see a better way of doing it... Once all new content is complete, 301s will be implemented from old content on www. to new content www2. Once the phasing is complete, and all new content is in place on www2, 301s will be implemented to point everything back to www. Does anybody see any problems with this approach? Or any ideas on how to better handle this situation? Thanks Mozzers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RWesley0 -
Canonical - unexpected page ranking
We are getting good ranking for an unexpected page, rathewr than the one we were trying to get ranking for. Should we put a canonical on the 'unexpected page' to the page we would like to receive the ranking for - or do we risk losing the ranking? Any suggestions welcomed. Ian
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Substance-create0 -
Changing Canonical Tags on Indexed Pages that are Ranking Well
Hi Guys, I recently rolled out a domain wide canonical tag change. Previously the website had canonical tags without the www, however the website was setup to redirect to www on page load. I noticed that the site competitors were all using www and as far as I understand www versus non www, it's based on preference. In order to keep things consistent, I changed the canonical tag to include the www. Will the site drop in rankings? Especially if the pages are starting to rank quite well. Any feedback is appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | QuickToImpress0 -
Client rebranded with a new website but can't migrate now defunct franchise website to new website.
Hi everyone, My client is a chain of franchised restaurants with a local domain website named after the franchise. The franchise exited the market while the client stayed and built its own brand with a separate website. The franchise website (which is extremely popular) will be shut down soon but the client will not be able to redirect the franchise website to the new website for legal reasons. What can I do to ensure that we start ranking immediately for the franchise keyphrase as soon as the franchise website is shutdown. We currently have the new website and access to the old website (which we can't redirect) Thanks, T
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tarek_Lel0 -
Does it make sense to create new pages with friendlier URLs then redirect old pages to new?
Hi Moz! My client has messy URLs. does it make sense to write new clean URLs, then 301 redirect all old URLs to the new ones? Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Do you get links from new websites?
There's a new industry specific website that looks decent. It's clean and nothing spammy. However, it's so new it's DA is under 10. Is it worth pursuing a link from a site like this? On one hand, there's nothing spammy and it is industry specific. On the other...it's just DA is so terrible (worse than any of our other links), I don't want it to hurt us. Any thoughts? Ruben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
Previously ranking #1 in google, web page has 301 / url rewrite, indexed but now showing for keyword search?
Two web pages on my website, previously ranked well in google, consistent top 3 places for 6months+, but when the site was modified, these two pages previously ending .php had the page names changed to the keyword to further improve (or so I thought). Since then the page doesn't rank at all for that search term in google. I used google webmaster tools to remove the previous page from Cache and search results, re submitted a sitemap, and where possible fixed links to the new page from other sites. On previous advice to fix I purchased links, web directories, social and articles etc to the new page but so far nothing... Its been almost 5 months and its very frustrating as these two pages previously ranked well and as a landing page ended in conversions. This problem is only appearing in google. The pages still rank well in Bing and Yahoo. Google has got the page indexed if I do a search by the url, but the page never shows under any search term it should, despite being heavily optimised for certain terms. I've spoke to my developers and they are stumped also, they've now added this text to the effected page(s) to see if this helps. Header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seanclc
$newurl=SITE_URL.$seo;
Header("Location:$newurl"); Can Google still index a web page but refuse to show it in search results? All other pages on my site rank well, just these two that were once called something different has caused issues? Any advice? Any ideas, Have I missed something? Im at a loss...0 -
Is Google taking longer to rank new sites?
We run a lot of "niche blogs" and websites focused on fairly non-competitive keywords. At the start of the year, we used to be able to put up websites and be able to achieve almost instant rankings on these sites. However, recently, it seems to be taking a lot longer for these sites to rank. It also seems to be taking longer for Google to index links. Is this a recent change in Google to protect against spam and help filter out the lower quality sites? Has anyone else noticed this or is it just me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ukss19840