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Moving pages to new domain
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Hello,
Our product pages are ranked #1 on google for our target keywords using our domain e.g. www.olddomain.com/cases/productxyz and sell about 20 products all ranked #1.
We have a new company called www.newco.com/case/product1, 2, 3 etc.
We use woocommerce e-commerce for both old and new sites.
What is the best way to list our old co-products on our new site and move over the #1 rankings?
Do we create new products (using our new nice design) in the newco.com woo commerce and then redirect old co links? do we copy and paste all that old content into the newco.com?
Totally confused. Thank you!
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Hello James,
I would advise you to make the new pages as close to the old ones as you can, meaning that you would use the same content and try to keep a similar file structure, including product names. Then make sure every one of your old product URLs has a 301 redirect to the new one on the new site. Also redirect the home page, category pages, and other indexed pages of the old site to their corresponding pages on the new site. Follow that up with some sort of catch-all redirect that ensures every other possible URL someone might end up on from the old site goes to the new site.
How to do a successful domain migration is beyond the scope of this Q&A format. You should read the following, which will give you a better understanding of the process and things to look out for. And yes, despite what Kevin said, you can move rankings from one domain to another. I've done it many times. There will be a lag of a few weeks to a month, even if you do it right, but eventually Google figures out what has happened.
https://moz.com/blog/website-migration-guide
https://searchengineland.com/site-migration-seo-checklist-dont-lose-traffic-286880
http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/website-migration-seo-checklist/
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I don't think it's possible to move rank from one URL to another.
I have similar experience and I created new pages under the new domain, populated with relevant content; pictures, text, Q&A, videos, etc. Optimize the pages and build links to them. You can 301 your ranking page to the new one, but I believe you would lose your rank. Get your new pages relevant before redirecting your old domain ranking pages.
Hope that helps
KJr
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