How to mitigate impact of retiring 20,000 old URLs from the previous website version (migration was in 2015)
-
Hello!
So, we migrated our website in 2015 to the "new version" and we now have 20,000 old URLs that we'd like to officially retire. the only traffic coming to these pages is obviously from backlinks pointing at our site.
How do i gauge the hit that our website will take once we retire these URLs?
Is there a tool that will allow me to look at referral traffic numbers per URL so that i know how much traffic we'll be losing?
any advice would be helpful!
thanks!
yael
-
So as I mentioned I would never delete a page without a redirect (even if that is a redirect to the homepage). If you do that, there will be a minimal amount of authority that you lose. There's no way to know exactly how much, but it should be marginal.
As for the referral traffic, I mentioned how to measure that above. But again with a 301 redirect, you will keep that traffic and if it is still relevant traffic, it should still add to your bottom line.
-
Hi NorthStarInbound, thanks for your response.
By "retiring" i mean deleting. They're old URLs that we'd like to get rid of and just let the new pages stand on their own.
But we would be giving up the authority that those pages have accumulated. The question is, how much authority is at stake? How large of a hit are we going to take? How can we measure this?
Any advice is helpful! Thanks, yael
-
What do you mean by "retiring"? Is there another page that you could redirect to so you don't lose the authority those backlinks are providing?
As for seeing how much referral traffic you could lose, you can use Google Analytics for that. Go to Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages. Then in the secondary dimension, go to Acquisition > Medium.
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
-
We are redirecting http and non www versions of our website. Should all versions http (non www version and www version) and https (non www version) should just have 1 redirect to the https www version?
We are redirecting http and non www versions of our website. Should all versions http (non www version and www version) and https (non www version) should just have 1 redirect to the https www version? Thant way all forms of the website are pointing to one version?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Caffeine_Marketing0 -
Migration to a new domain
Hi everyone, So i have one project where I'm planning to move current content on new domain, two reasons: 1. It seems current domain has some google penalty (backlink related, not manual) 2. Client wants rebranding and already has domain with new brand name. So as content is high quality and there is no content related penalty from google, what would be the best way to migrate existing content without passing any penalty AND without Google treating it as duplicate content. If i do 301 i suspect any penalty there is might follow, if i just copy existing content it won't be original content, what is the best solution here? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joelsemy0 -
How do I redirect my old PHP website to my new Java website?
Please could you help? My old website is written in php. I've created a new design of the website in Java. I'll be using the same domain name though. example.com and I'd like to pass my link juice to my new redesigned website. When I turn the domain name to point to my new website how do I make sure pages that are ranked in google that don't exist on my new website transfer 301 from my old website to a similar page on my new website. Old Website Example example.com/bootcampuk.php New Website Example example.com/bootcamps.jsp Many Thanks, Rob
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | puamethod0 -
Google Webmaster tools -Fixing over 20,000+ crawl errors
Hi, I'm trying to gather all the 404 crawl errors on my website after a recent hacking that I've been trying to rectify and clean up. Webmaster tools states that I have over 20 000+ crawl errors. I can only download a sample of 1000 errors. Is there any way to get the full list instead of correcting 1000 errors, marking them as fixed and waiting for the next batch of 1000 errors to be listed in Webmaster tools? The current method is quite timely and I want to take care of all errors in one shot instead of over a course of a month.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FPK0 -
URL Construction
Working on an old site that currently has category urls (that productively rank) like this example: LakeNameBoating.com/category/705687/rentals I want to enhance the existing mid page one rank for terms related to "Lake Name Boat Rentals," 301ing the old urls to the new, would you construct the new urls as: LakeNameBoating.com/lake-name-boat-rentals or... LakeNameBoating.com/boat-rentals And why? It's all for one particular lake with "name" being just an anonymous placeholder example. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Effect Of Restoring Old Website After Implementing 301 Redirects
After redesigning my old Drupal website and launching a new "improved" Wordpress version the new version is performing badly. Ranking is poor and conversions don't occur. I realize that my new design is bad (no call to action, poor structure, text heavy). New business inquiries have ceased. The site contains 450 pages. After spending $25,000 and a year of my life I see the new version is not an improvement! What would be the effect of reinstating the old version of the site and doing 301 redirects back to it? Would the old rankings be restored? I need to decide whether I should revert or focus on fixing flaws in the improved design. Any thoughts?? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
Combining 2 Websites
Any assistance/feedback is greatly appreciated. The scenario: We currently own two website, and we'd like to combine them and eliminate some expenses. Although the content is very similar in nature, it is not exact. www.KF.com that is managed by a third-party provider & www.KFA.com that is managed by the manufacturer of the product we sell. (*sites url's are not accurate) We have ended the contract of KF.com, however, this site has the best SERP/SEO.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FX4nWOO
We assume we'll take a hit, no matter what we do - however when it comes to SEO, but what is the right move to make? Do a domain "Transfer/Redirect" of KF to KFA.com or Do we simply change the KFA.com to KF.com? Still very much a rookie when it comes to this stuff. I do have the ability to SEO the KFA.com webiste. Hoping this makes sense - and apologize for the bad url's just not sure I can actually post the true addresses. Thanks in advance.0 -
Xml sitemap advice for website with over 100,000 articles
Hi, I have read numerous articles that support submitting multiple XML sitemaps for websites that have thousands of articles... in our case we have over 100,000. So, I was thinking I should submit one sitemap for each news category. My question is how many page levels should each sitemap instruct the spiders to go? Would it not be enough to just submit the top level URL for each category and then let the spiders follow the rest of the links organically? So, if I have 12 categories the total number of URL´s will be 12??? If this is true, how do you suggest handling or home page, where the latest articles are displayed regardless of their category... so I.E. the spiders will find l links to a given article both on the home page and in the category it belongs to. We are using canonical tags. Thanks, Jarrett
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jarrett.mackay0