Moving site to new domain without access to redirect from old to new. How can I do this with as little loss to SERP results as possible?
-
I've been hired to build a new site for a customer. They were duped by some shady characters at goglupe.com (If you can reach them, tell them they are rats--phone is disconnected, address is a comedy club on Mission in SF). Glupe owns the domain name and would not transfer or give FTP access prior to dropping off the face of the earth. The customer doesn't want to chase after them with lawyers, so we are moving on. New domain, new site with much of the same content as previous site.
All that I have access to is the old wordpress site. I plan to build the new site, then remove all pages/posts from the old site. Is there anything I can do to salvage the current page 1 ranking? Obviously, the new domain will take some time to get back there. Just hoping to avoid any pitfalls or penalties if I can.
If I had complete access, I would follow all the standard guidelines. But I don't. Any thoughts?
Thanks!
Chris
-
New wrinkle. I added the redirects to the original site (robinsonsllc.net). Pages are redirecting just fine to new site (ababilling.net).
However, I get redirected when I try to login to robinsonsllc.net/wp-admin.
I didn't add any wildcards, and I certainly didn't redirect the wp-admin. I have no way to get back into the original site now.
Any ideas?
-
Glad to know that this may not be near as bad as expected. Obviously this is not an ideal situation. The big lesson learned by these folks, take care of your domain!
-
Yoast will be able to handle it, though you might need to upgrade to premium for the plugin.
There are many other capable redirect plugins for WP which should do the trick too.
-
Yoast SEO plugin will do it.
-
Sorry, not duped as in duplicated content. Duped as in that company took their money and ran.
I can set up redirects for each page/post? Do I need a plugin for that? I don't have access to the htaccess file.
-
If you have access to the old live WordPress site then you can set up redirects in there from old posts to new, relevant posts on the new site.
What content was actually duped? I barely see any content at all on goglupe.
-
Correct. Site is still live.
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
-
Possible issues with 301 redirecting to a new domain name
Ive got a current domain and after a bit of a rebrand Im considering 301 rediecting the current site to a newly purchased domain. Id redirect each age to idential pages. Am I likely to see any issues. I know this is the recomended way from Google but just wondering how smoothly it works and whether Im likely to see any ranking drops or other problems?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | paulfoz16090 -
Redirecting a Few URLs to a New Domain
We are in the process of buying the blog section of a site. Let's say Site A is buying Site B. We have taken the content from Site B and replicated it on Site A, along with the exact url besides the TLD. We then issued 301 redirects from Site B to Site A and initiated a crawl on those original Site B urls so Google would understand they are now redirecting to Site A. The new urls for Site A, with the same content are now showing up in Google's index if we do a site:SiteA.com search on the big G. Anyone have any experience with this as to how long before Site A urls should replace Site B urls in the search results? I undestand there may be a ranking difference and CTR difference based on domain bias, etc... I'm just asking if everything goes as planned and there isn't a huge issue, does the process take weeks or months?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoaustin0 -
Can you give me some advices to rank this domain?
Hi Moz community, I've a coleague that's working to rank this site: www.devsar.com. The selected keywords are:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gaston Riera
Mobile development
Web development
Django Development
Python Development I've checked the site: It's fast and clean. Has a good PA and DA. It's responsive and good lookking. Meta description , title, hreflang.. everything in order. Link profile a little rare (checked with ahref.com), it's because someone made a mistake redirecting some expired domain Can you help me to help my mate out?
Thanks
GR.0 -
If I put a piece of content on an external site can I syndicate to my site later using a rel=canonical link?
Could someone help me with a 'what if ' scenario please? What happens if I publish a piece of content on an external website, but then later decide to also put this content on my website. I want my website to rank first for this content, even though the original location for the content was the external website. Would it be okay for me to put a rel=canonical tag on the external website's content pointing to the copy on my website? Or would this be seen as manipulative?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RG_SEO1 -
Possible problem with new site (GWT no queries/very low index vs. submitted)
Hi everyone, I recently launched a new website for a small business loan company in the Dallas area. The site has been live for roughly a month and a half. I submitted everything to GWT as usual, including my sitemap. I am not sure what's going on with the site, as there is no activity from GWT in the impressions or queries. The submit vs. index is 24/3 (and hasn't moved). Also the queries graph on the overview stops at 3/18/2015... On another note, when I go to Crawl > Sitemaps, it shows that there were pages indexed during the month of march and then on April 3 it drops from 17 to 2 and never increases. Google says there are no errors or issues found, but I feel like there's something wrong. When I do site:, my URLs do pop up which makes me believe there's just a problem with my GWT. With that being said, I'm not happy THINKING there's something wrong. I need to actually know what the problem is. The only thing I can think of that I have done is purchase SSL for the site, but when I search what pages are indexed using www. it shows all the HTTPS URLS, so that would tell me that the site is getting indexed without a problem? Does anyone have a clue as to what might be happening? I will attach some screen shots so that you can get a better idea... KQ2366i D5xBNZf mF7kkgW
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jameswesleyhunt0 -
301 old site to new site?
I have client with an old site - www.bestfamilylawattorney.com - which had a lot of spammy links (and bad rankings). Instead of fixing those issues, we started a new URL - www.berenjifamilylaw.com - with new content and redesign. Should I do a 301 redirect from old to new domain? If the old site was being penalized, would a 301 transfer that penalty? I just want to make sure I don't end up hurting the new site after doing all the work to start fresh. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14400 -
Is it safe to 301 redirect old domain to new domain after a manual unnatural links penalty?
I have recently taken on a client that has been manually penalised for spammy link building by two previous SEOs. Having just read this excellent discussion, http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lifting-a-manual-penalty-given-by-google-personal-experience I am weighing up the odds of whether it's better to cut losses and recommend moving domains. I had thought under these circumstances it was important not to 301 the old domain to the new domain but the author (Lewis Sellers) comments on 3/4/13 that he is aware of forwards having been implemented without transferring the penalty to the new domain. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lifting-a-manual-penalty-given-by-google-personal-experience#jtc216689 Is it safe to 301? What's the latest thinking?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ewan.Kennedy0 -
Can I make 301 redirects on a Windows server (without access to IIS)?
Hey everyone, I've been trying to figure out a way to set up some 301 redirects to handle the broken links left behind after a site restructuring, but I can only ever find information on 2 methods that I can't use (as far as I can tell). The first method is to do some stuff with an htaccess file, but that looks like it only works on Linux-based servers. The method described for Windows servers is generally to install this IIS rewrite/redirect module and run that, but I don't think our web hosting company allows users to log directly into the server, so I wouldn't be able to use the IIS thing. Is there any other way to get a 301 redirect set up? And is this uncommon for a web hosting company to do, or do you all just run your sites on Linux-based servers or your own Windows machines? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrianAlpert780