Sitemap submission for site migration?
-
Hi mozzers,
We're about to migrate 4 domains into 1.
- Is there a particular way I should generate and submit the sitemap or should I just follow the same protocol as for one domain? Should I even worry submitting a sitemap when the site has this drupal module?
- I have access to the webmaster tools of all domains, should I do something specific on the accounts that are migrating besides submitting a sitemap?
Thanks for letting me know!
-
Also wanted to point out, John Mueller from Google just asswered a very similar question here: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/RTfC0dCd8B8/discussion - not sure if this is the same exact situation but thought it might help.
-
The important thing to test when submitting a sitemap like this is whether or not Google accepts it. Once you submit the URL through Webmaster tools for the sitemap, just follow up and make sure the URLs you're saying are here have shown up in their indexed pages list. As long as these match your intended submission, or a big enough sample does if it's a huge sitemap, you should be fine.
Equally as important, if not more so, is making sure that 100% of the old URL paths have been 301 redirected to their new homes, especially especially especially when you have domains with a higher authority being retired for a better sounding domain name, you want to seed the authority for the new site, not just 301 all the URLs to the homepage or something, but go through every old indexed page and make sure they have been forwarded.
A fun trick for this is to use authority tools like Moz or Ahrefs to determine which old URLs had the most links, and that way if you are completely strapped for time you can at least make sure that say your top 100 URLs with the most authority have been fully forwarded to their intended replacement - of course doing ALL old URLs redirected to their new URL would be best.
Hoping you did this with the migration but figured I'd cover it just in case. Hope this helped!
Cheers,
-
Hi!
I'm not an expert in Drupal so for now I'm only to help you with point 2. The domain that you are migrating should be marked as that the domain is now being migrated to another one. You can do that via this tool: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83106?hl=en
Martijn.
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
-
Is there a maximum sitemap size?
Hi all, Over the last month we've included all images, videos, etc. into our sitemap and now its loading time is rather high. (http://www.troteclaser.com/sitemap.xml) Is there any maximum sitemap size that is recommended from Google?
Technical SEO | | Troteclaser0 -
My site is not being regularly crawled?
My site used to be crawled regularly, but not anymore. My pages aren't showing up in the index months after they've been up. I've added them to the sitemap and everything. I now have to submit them through webmaster tools to get them to index. And then they don't really rank? Before you go spouting off the standard SEO resolutions... Yes, I checked for crawl errors on Google Webmaster and no, there aren't any issues No, the pages are not noindex. These pages are index,follow No, the pages are not canonical No, the robots.txt does not block any of these pages No, there is nothing funky going on in my .htaccess. The pages load fine No, I don't have any URL parameters set What else would be interfereing? Here is one of the URLs that wasn't crawled for over a month: http://www.howlatthemoon.com/locations/location-st-louis
Technical SEO | | howlusa0 -
Do you think this site has been hit by penguin?
Hi Guys, I need some opinion on a website i am working on www.colourbnners.co.uk They updated their website in August but the company they used did not take into account the URL structure and hence there's a massive loss in links in August time. They also dropped off Google for all their key terms except their brand name 'colour banners'
Technical SEO | | gezzagregz
Since then, they have implemented a 301 redirect. Some key points They have not received any manual warnings in WMT I have disavowed some poor quality links that they have built over the years I am building high quality links quite selectively/slowly There were a lot of duplicate content issues - these have been resolved now.
So my question to you SEO pros is do you think its penguin? or something that i am missing?
If it is penguin, what is the best form of attack to get it removed? regards gezzagrez0 -
Two Sites with Similar Content
I have a specialized website for hospitals covering a specific topic. This same topic is also applicable to another market but with some minor modifications. I'm thinking about starting a new site to target this specific market and use the same content as the one specialized for healthcare. I will have to make some minor adjustments to the articles to take out the healthcare part and replace with the other industry. If my content is similar between both sites and both authored by me could that possibly hurt my rankings? Any opinions appreciated.
Technical SEO | | MedGroupMedia0 -
Site Wide Links
I have a link on pr 3 home page website placed in the side bar. It is on a WordPress website that spans a couple hundred pages and the side bar is on every page. The majority of the pages are not ranked or have any pr. Can this affect me negatively?
Technical SEO | | raph39880 -
HTML Sitemap Pagination?
Im creating an a to z type directory of internal pages within a site of mine however there are cases where there are over 500 links within the pages. I intend to use pagination (rel=next/prev) to avoid too many links on the page but am worried about indexation issues. should I be worried?"
Technical SEO | | DMGoo0 -
Why Does this Site Rank for so Many Keywords?
I was doing some research today and kept coming across this site sylvane.com I checked OSE and found that it only has a DA of 37 PA of 35, and only 79 linking domains (966 links total). I got to looking and there are a few links like this http://lulala.us/twxoops/html/userinfo.php?uid=303 Anyway, accroding to SEMRush, this site ranks for over 6,000 keywords. I ran content on a couple of their high ranking pages and the content is not unique, at least not very unique on the pages I checked. What is so special about that site that google is giving it so much love? I am not trying to call them out, I just want to know what this site is doing to garner the favor of google when I have a site in the same niche with a higher DA, PA, linking domains, and social signals.
Technical SEO | | CharlesMontgomery0