We changed our domain, I used the move tool in Google Search Console and I am having our site redirected and go daddy, and now I spoke with someone who suggest we do a 301 redirect for all pages on our site and I’m not sure that’s the correct move.
-
We just changed our domain name after 15 years. when I bought the new domain name I called Go Daddy and they instructed me to contact my google G sweet admin account and change all of our emails over which I did and then I went into Shopify who is my host and changed my primary domain there and then I went back to Go Daddy and had my old website forwarded to my new site. since then there has been nothing but problems with Google. my product feed from my merchant center account has been suspended three or four times now, I tried to rename and move all of my Google accounts from my old domain to my new one, but I am not an SEO person... after making the changes I have started google chats with analytics department with the merchant center with Google as they all keep saying that it looks fine but I’m not convinced because the product feed keeps getting disapproved. So I posted an ad for help and the Guy I spoke with suggested I do a 301 redirect for every single page on my old site, But I’m concerned that might confuse things further? I’ve already started the move in Google Search console And in Shopify I added the old domain back into the domains section and am having it redirectEd that way too...
I guess I’m just looking to know which way I should proceed, any and all advice is warmly welcome thank you in advance
Maureen
-
@toofast13 I hope you got an answer to this.
If not, some ideas to find all the old URLs would be to look at the Google Search Console instance for your old domain and see all the pages that were indexed by Google in there.
Another option (although possibly less accurate) would be to do a site: search in Google to again see the pages that Google has indexed for your old domain. You can do this by entering site:website.com into Googles search box (replace website.com with your old domain). There is a useful post about this here.
This may not result in all the URLs but it should give you the important ones that Google knows about.
I hope this helps and may even be of use to somebody who is having the same problem in the future.
-
Hi thanks for responding!
1- Do you know of a good/efficient way to find all the websites that were linking to our old site?
2- regarding the site map, it is automatically created by Shopify so I don’t think I have much control over that unfortunately? I’m having a hard time getting a list of all of my old URLs because when I changed the domain name in Shopify my old website basically became nonexistent. I’m wondering if I should create another Accounts and Shopify just to host my old website temporarily so that I can get all that information out of it? -
Hi I guess I’m not sure that I can do that because I am hosted on Shopify and I don’t think I have access to the htaccess.
My old website is still listed as a domain in my Shopify admin but I don’t think it’s actually hosted anywhere, I wonder if I could post my old website on go daddy temporarily to create the redirects? -
I don't recommend old domain redirect to new domain in the domain registrar. You should host the domain in your website host, then use a simple .htaccess file to redirect all traffic on the old domain to the new domain.
<code>**Options +FollowSymLinks** **RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^OLDDOMAIN\.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://NEWDOMAIN.com [R=301,L]**</code>
Use your favorite text to like Notepad++ to create a .htaccess file and add the fire above. Make sure you replaced the domain name with your old and new domains respectively.
Then upload it to you old domain's hosting root folder (public html folder)
If you do it that way every click from the search engine to your old domain will always be redirected to the new domain.
Lastly, you will also need to add both domains to google search console and use the change domain tool to let google know about the redirect.
Adam Chronister recently conducted a simple experiment on this issue and he started seeing positive effects almost instantly.
I have used it on many of my websites and it's working perfectly well.
-
Hi I’m so sorry I have tried to respond to this post three times now but I keep getting an error hopefully this works, thank you for getting back to me it is much appreciated. We started the move last Friday night and so now it’s been approximately a week I hope I’m not too late! I guess I will go forward with the 301 redirects of my pages thanks again!
-
It sounds like you are pretty deep into the move, Maureen.
A domain migration is one of the riskiest things you can do in SEO. There are so many moving parts and it has to be planned meticulously. There are hundreds of things that need to be considered and well strategised, including (but not limited to):
- Checking indexed pages to 301 redirect them all to the most relevant page on the new domain
- Checking incoming backlinks to ensure that they are also redirected so you don't lose any link equity
- Crawking the old website (you can use a tool for this) and extracting all URL's for a redirect plan
- Making sure that the internal link architecture and anchor text structure is similar
- Ensuring that Google Search Console has been told about the domain change
- Ensuring that the new pages can be crawled and rendered correctly
- Submitting the sitemap of the new website to Google Search Console
- Ironing out any technical issues (I don't want to alarm you, but there are a lot of things that need checking here)
- Making sure the content is as close to, or the same as, the old website
- Making sure that the page titles, meta description and headers are pulled over in the correct way
You were advised correctly, every single URL on the old domain needs redirecting to the same version of that page on the new website.
When did you make the change? It might be too late to recover everything, but it's worth a good try!
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 Google Analytics is still showing data for edited/old "Goals"?
For example, I edited "Goal #1" (goal type=event) with new values/event conditions last Nov. 20, 2014. Why Google Analytics is showing numbers from Nov 1-19 for Goal #1? Does Google Analytics show old data?TIA!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | zpm20140 -
Google Trusted Stores Badge in the UK
Hi All Does anybody know when the Google Trusted Stores Program will be available in the UK ? Thanks Adam
Conversion Rate Optimization | | AMG1000 -
Landing page on a separate domain?
I want to start a PPC campaign for an ecommerce site, but my ads are rejected due to my URL being offensive. The name works great from a branding perspective, but it has kept me from being listed in certain directories and advertisements. I thought about buying a separate domain to host the landing pages for the PPC campaign where the user would then be redirected to my product page for purchasing. Is this a good idea? Would you recommend another approach?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | RaginCajun0 -
Site Redesign - 2 Target Audiences?
Hey everyone, we are planning a redesign on our website (we have been planning it since Fall last year, but got very busy in the Winter), and some new content / design questions have arisen. Right now, we are a "digital media" agency, and we offer video, design, and marketing services. So we do web videos, motion graphics, websites, seo, really a little bit of everything except for 3d modeling. What we are really trying to sell is the combination of these services (we may create a web video and redesign a groups website, then manage their adwords and marketing campaigns) and become our audiences "Go To" digital media agency. We were toying with the idea of giving visitors the option of picking from one target audience or another when they arrived at the home page, and their experience would be customized to best fit the needs of that particular audience from there on out. For example, on our homepage we were thinking of display our overview and value proposition (which would be the same, no matter which target audience group you were a member of), then asking if the visitor was a "Small Business Owner looking for guidance" or a "Marketing Director looking for outsourcing partners", then based on what option they chose, they'd be directed to a corresponding landing page optimized for converting this audience. We were worrying this may drop our domain or page authority for our home page, since these aren't really keywords that we'd normally be trying to rank for. We understand that it is ideal to have 1 "niche" target audience, but we found that we heavily service both audiences. Any help or suggestions are appreciated, thanks!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | RenderPerfect0 -
Page URL - Hyphens or Underscores?
What's better for SEO and why? (any references would be greatly appreciated) For the purpose of a URL of a page is it better to use: Hyphens Underscores Would hyphens or underscores be better for Google Adwords?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | HMCOE0 -
How can I Monetize My Site with The Type of Traffic it Receives?
I was just in here yesterday asking a question, so I appreciate everyone's patience with this newbie! This is a totally different site that I have a question about so here goes: I have a site that has started to receive large amounts of traffic from an image search. My intention was to use Amazon for products based on my website theme. I haven't been getting traffic from my intended keywords. Now I rank #2 for an image search, loads of traffic! GREAT! But what next? These ppl. aren't looking to buy stuff, they just want the image. Fine, it is a public domain image. I thought of adding some more informational articles and using adsense to bring in some cash. Any opinions on the best way to go with this site? I only have 3 articles up so it could go in any direction from here. Thanks!!!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | iheartkelby0 -
Ideal product page conversion/retention rate for eCommerce sites
Hi SEOmoz-ers, I was wondering if anyone has data regarding product page abandonment rate (% of potential customers that leave the site after seeing product pages) for websites like Overstock, REI or Zappos? As you may know the above mentioned sites do an exceptional job with product pages. It would be helpful to know what some of the leaders in this space are achieving in terms of conversion rate. What is your personal opinion about this? Thanks,
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Kush_VMI
Kush0 -
How accurate is the Geo-Targeting of Google and Bing/Yahoo PPC ads?
I have a client who serves a local market and who has had trouble in the past with people out of her service area clicking on ads. She asked how accurate the geo-targeting option is. I know it's not possible to be completely accurate resolving the location of IP addresses, but was wondering if there are any recent statistics out there regarding how accurate or inaccurate geo-targeting is. I did some quick searches but did not see any current numbers. Many Thanks!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | JKuly0