Gradual roll out of new webpages on temporary subdomain
-
I’m working for a company who is looking to gradually replace an existing website with a new website.
They will replace the homepage, then a section, then another section, and so on, until the new site is complete.
All new pages will sit on a temporary subdomain.
So, for example, the URL for the homepage at the moment is www.domain.com, but as soon as the new homepage is ready, that will be launched on a temporary URL / subdomain - www2.domain.com - replacing the old homepage.
The new pages will then gradually increase on www2.domain.com (so journeys will inevitably move across domains) until the whole of the new website is ready on www2.domain.com - at which point it will move on to www.domain.com.
I know this isn’t a good way of doing things - I would much prefer the new site is completely built and then it just replaces the old site with the necessary 301 redirects in place - but the company wants to see the gradual roll out of new page designs.
So, my question is, what’s the best way to manage this without negatively impacting rankings for the existing domain (www.domain.com)?
-
The most important is to redirect all your backlinks via 301 to the new URLs. As you've been told, why not develop the entire site in the subdomain and then move it to the new one, so you don't play with redirects and traffic from one subdomain to another.
-
I'm not sure how the search engines look at 302 redirects which are in place for a prolonged time. I'll be interested to see if anyone else on this thread has additional insights about that. What I can say is that I've used 302 redirects in some cases for prolonged period of time (although not as long as 12-18 months, perhaps more like 4-6 months) and have not experienced issues from that approach. But others on this forum may have more experience with 302 redirects over that period of time.
The other thing I'll mention is that some tools like Moz Pro will report 302 Redirects as "issues". My perspective is to look through these because some might be unintentional, and then to ignore when they are inentional/strategic.
-
Hi seoelevated,
Thanks for your response. I have been considering a 302 approach, but I am concerned about how long I can leave 302s in place. If from start to finish, the roll out takes 12 - 18 months, will that cause any problems?
Thanks!
-
Unless I'm missing something in the thread here, it seems to me this would be better served by 302. My rationale is that you will be eventually going back to the www URL and you want that to retain the full equity of all its links. So, during the interim period, you would have 302 redirects, and then when you switch back to www, you would simply remove all the redirects.
The only downside I see to that is that during the interim period, one thing you won't be able to measure as the site is gradually updated, is the incremental impact of the new page designs on SEO. You will still be able to measure the new page design in terms of conversion rate and other UX factors, but measuring impact on SEO wouldn't really be feasible.
-
Yes, I got it. That's the only option to do this if you want to pass link juice to www2.domain.com while you are working on the new site. There is no way to not lose traffic if you want to redirect everything on the page by page basis. Traffic will bounce back after you move back to www.domain.com, but it can takes time.
Ross
-
Hi Ross.
Everything will have a 301.
For example:
- When I launch the new homepage on the temporary subdomain, I will add a 301 redirect from www.domain.com to www2.domain.com.
- When I launch a new section page, I will add a new 301 redirect from www.domain.com/section1 to www2.domain.com/section1.
- When I launch a new product page, I will add a new 301 redirect from www.domain.com/product1 to www2.domain.com/product1.
And then, eventually, when everything is moved back to the www domain, I will setup the following 301 redirects:
- Homepage - From www2.domain.com to www.domain.com
- Section page - From www2.domain.com/section1 to www.domain.com/section1
- Product page - From www2.domain.com/product1 to www.domain.com/product1
Does this make sense? So, everything will have a 301 redirect.
I'm just concerned about the fact I'm basically having to 301 redirect a whole site away from it's original domain to a temporary subdomain, and then back again. Should I be concerned about this?
-
The only problem I see here that you will lose traffic by setting 301s to www2 and then removing those 301s.
Ross
-
Hi Ross.
Thanks again for the response.
There will only ever be one version of a page, and each time an old page is replaced with a new version, I will 301 redirect from the www version to the www2 version.
My concern is, at the end of the web build all pages on www will have been 301 redirected to www2, and then I’ll need to 301 redirect them all back again to www when the new site is moved off the temporary subdomain. Do you see any problems with this approach?
-
If not then I would deindex completely the www2.domain.com and do not set up any redirects at all. Just have your www.domain.com working in a normal way until you migrate your www2.domain.com to www.domain.com. Also, If you planning to change the URLs on the new version of the website then you need to set up 301 redirects from old URLs to new URLs on your server ( apache or ngnix) so you do not get any broken links.
Ross
-
Are you planning to have both versions of the site working at the same time?
Ross
-
Thanks for the response.
But is it okay to 301 redirect, for example, the homepage to a temporary www2 subdomain, and then back again once the whole site is ready to move back to the www domain?
-
Hi there,
The most important is to redirect all your backlinks via 301 to the new URLs. Also, you can take a look at this guide.
Ross
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
-
Why use a wwwP subdomain naming convention
While working through a series of crawl reports and competitive insights for a site, I noticed one of the competitors had switched from a WWW-version to a wwwP-version. Looking back at the snapshot I took of this during the same time period in 2014, I noticed a significant drop in PA/DA by 20+/-. I'm curious to know if anybody else has experienced something similar, and if anybody can provide insights on why a change like this would even be made? I'll preface it with, everything we could see that this competitor was doing from the outside, was legitimate and propelling them in a positive direction.
Web Design | | dodgejd0 -
How to bounce back after a new url & new site design?
About a month ago, my company changed domains (from the long-established www.imageworksstudio.com to the new www.imageworkscreative.com) and also did a complete overhaul of our site. We tried to do everything necessary to keep Google happy as we went through this change, but we've suffered a drastic loss of both rankings and traffic. I know that can happen as a result of a redesign AND as a result of a new domain, but I'm wondering how long you would expect it to take before we bounced back and also, what can we do in the meantime to improve?
Web Design | | ScottImageWorks0 -
Major URL changes in new site launch
Hey Guys - we recently launched a new website for a client. Prior, all of their URLs were dynamic via an old-school Cold Fusion CMS. We basically had to rewrite 90% of the sites URLs (site is like 300 pages). The new URLs are SEO friendly and the on-page SEO is strong; but the page rank/authority is starting from scratch from these pages and placement has decreased more most of the new pages with competitive keywords. We set up all of the 301 redirects properly and are actively monitoring in Google Webmaster Tools. **Anything else I can do to lessen the pain and get these pages higher page rank/authority sooner rather than later?**Thanks for all of your help.
Web Design | | NobleStudios0 -
New more "helpful" internal linking causing SERP & traffic drop?
Still dealing with the weird traffic drop on my website. I have removed a bunch of old links from a defunct blog, 301 thin pages, added text to remaining pages. I'm still stumped. So awhile ago I freshened up my website and thought I was "helping people" by making sure they could CONTACT the studio more easily... I added more links to the "contact page" I thought this would help conversions...This changed the number of links to my entire site....Would this be the problem with my ranking/traffic drop? http://bayareaboudoir.com/babinternal1.pdf
Web Design | | Squee1 -
Comparing the site structure/design of my live site to my new design
Hi SEOmoz team, for the last few months I've been working on a new design for my website, the old, live design can be viewed at http://www.concerthotels.com - it is primarily focused on helping users find hotels close to concert venues throughout North America. The old structure was built in such a way that each concert venue had a number of different pages associated with it (all connected via tabs) - a page with information about the venue, a page with nearby hotels to the venue, a page of upcoming events, a page of venue reviews. An example of these pages can be seen at: http://www.concerthotels.com/venue/madison-square-garden/304484 http://www.concerthotels.com/venue-hotels/madison-square-garden-hotels/304484 http://www.concerthotels.com/venue-events/madison-square-garden-events/304484 http://www.concerthotels.com/venue-reviews/madison-square-garden-reviews/304484 The /venue-hotels/ pages are the most important pages on my website - and there is one of these pages for each concert venue - they are the landing pages for about 90% of the traffic on the website. I decided that having four pages for each venue was probably a poor design, since many of the pages ended up having little or no useful, unique content. So my new design attempts to bring a lot of the venue information together into fewer pages. My new website redesign is temporarily situated at: (not currently launched to the public) http://www.concerthotels.com/frontend The equivalent pages for Madison Square Garden are now: http://www.concerthotels.com/frontend/venue/madison-square-garden/304484 (the page above contains venue information, events and reviews) and http://www.concerthotels.com/frontend/venue-hotels/madison-square-garden-hotels/304484 I would really appreciate any feedback from you guys, based on what you think of the new site design compared to the old design from an SEO point of view. Of course, any feedback on site speed, easy of use etc compared to the old design would also be greatly appreciated. 🙂 My main fear is that when I launch the new design (the new URLs will be identical to the old ones), Google will take a dislike to it - I currently receive a large percentage of my traffic through Google organic search, so I don't want to launch a design that might damage that traffic. My gut instinct tells me that Google should prefer the new design - vastly reduced number of pages, each page now contains more unique content, and it's very much designed for users, so I'm hoping bounce rate, conversion etc will improve too. But my gut has been wrong in the past! 🙂 But I'd love to hear your thoughts, and thanks in advance for any feedback, Cheers Mike
Web Design | | mjk260 -
New site - same host domain?
Building a new site for my business (different URL) For SEO purposes...Is it ok to host the site on the same account as my existing site (GoDaddy) or should I purchase a seperate hosting account? Thanks
Web Design | | Tustep0 -
Technical SEO Question about TLD combined with SubDomain
I am making a new website but need to figure out the best way to do this in terms of SEO. I would like the website to have functionality of brochure website combined with an online store. My issue is that I will be using software called prestashop for my online store and CMS called MODx to develop my brochure site. (These can not be combined into one CMS). I can create brochure site with MOdx = www.example.com & then from that a subdomain using prestashop for my online store = store.example.com Can I get Google to index these as one site or would I be better off trying to get everything under the TLD. Ideally I would like just one site without subdomain Bacially what I am asking is... What are the effects of having subdomains in terms of SEO? Am I better of having everyhitng under TLD? Can I get Google to view TLD and Sub as one site? Hope this makes sense, thank you.
Web Design | | Socialdude0 -
Can "poor" subdomains drop PR of the root domain?
The page rank of my company's website has dropped from a 6 to a 4 over the past year or so. In that time, we implemented subdomains for development sites to show clients progress on their websites. I noticed that our "dev" sites are being indexed while in development and my question is, will Google drop pagerank of our root domain purely off of these "dev" subdomains? Example - our site is www.oursite.com Dev site - development1.oursite.com I just began investigating the drop and this came to my mind yesterday but am not too sure what type of impact these non-credible subdomains will have on our root domain. Any thoughts?
Web Design | | ckilgore0