Best approach to launch a new site with new urls - same domain
-
We have a high volume e-commerce website with over 15K items, an average of 150K visits per day and 12.6 pages per visit. We are launching a new website this spring which is currently on a beta sub domain and we are looking for the best strategy that preserves our current search rankings while throttling traffic (possibly 25% per week) to measure results.
The new site will be soft launched as we plan to slowly migrate traffic to it via a load balancer. This way we can monitor performance of the new site while still having the old site as a backup. Only when we are fully comfortable with the new site will we submit the 301 redirects and migrate everyone over to the new site. We will have a month or so of running both sites.
Except for the homepage the URL structure for the new site is different than the old site.
What is our best strategy so we don’t lose ranking on the old site and start earning ranking on the new site, while avoiding duplicate content and cloaking issues?
Here is what we got back from a Google post which may highlight our concerns better:
Thank You,
sincerely,
Stephan Woo Cude
SEO Specialist
-
Hi there,
I was just reading this old thread to get some info, but I'd love it if you could share you actual results from the launch. What did you do and how much did traffic change? How long before you were back to normal?
I usually find that with a new website and all new URLs, I end up seeing maybe a month or sodip in traffic that can be up to 10%. But that seems to be less and less as time goes on. The search engines are usually on top of it though, they recrawl and recatalog quite quickly.
Would love to hear from you.
Thanks!
Leslie
-
Just to chime in on this, albeit maybe a little late now... I had the same thought as I was reading through this with using rel=canonical to point the old pages to the new for now, so the search engines don't have any duplicate content issues until a 301 redirect can take over when the new site is fully launched.
However, depending on your rollout schedule, this would mean that the SERPs would soon be indexing only the new pages. You'd need to ensure that the traffic diverter you are using would handle this. Otherwise you could put the rel=canonical on the new pages for now, which would avoid the duplicate content until you are fully launched. Then you'd remove it and 301 redirect the old pages to the new.
Just something you maybe want to think about! Hopefully your traffic diverter can handle this though.
-
Thank you very much for the insight!
-
Ah ok. I understand now. I wasn't picking up on what you were saying before.
If with the soft launch you are already putting the "new" version of the site on their intended final URLs then yes, you can let the engines start crawling those URLs. For each new URL you let the search engines crawl make sure to 301 its corresponding old URL (the old site) to the new version to minimize any duplicate content issues.
If for whatever reason you can't quite 301 the old URLs yet (like if you still need instant access to reroute traffic back to them) you could try using rel=canonical on the old pages and point them to their new counter part only if the main content on each of the pages is almost exactly the same. You don't want Google to think you're manipulating them with rel=canonical.
-
Sorry this is so confusing and thank you so much for your responses... there would be no subdomain when we do the soft launch... it would be http://www.sierratradingpost.com/Mens-Clothing.html (old site) vs http://www.sierratradingpost.com/mens-clothing~d~15/ (new site)...
-
As I'd said, there really isn't a reason to let them get a head start. The URL's will be changing when you transition the new site out of the subdomain (ie beta.sierratradingpost.com/mens vs sierratradingpost.com/mens - those are considered 2 completely different URLs) and the engines will have to recrawl all of the new pages at that point anyway.
-
We do plan to do that... it is just since we plan a soft launch we will essentially have 2 sites out there. We are wondering when to remove the noindex from the new site. We will have 2 sites for about a month... should we let the bots crawl the new site (new urls, same domain) only we we take down the old site and have the 301's or let Google crawl earlier to get the new site a head start on indexing.
-
And when you drop the sub domain you definitely want to 301 all of the old site structure's URLs to their corresponding new page's URLs. That way nothing gets lost in the transition.
-
We would drop the subdomain - so we would have 2 "Men's Clothing" department pages - different URLs, slightly different content...
-
Yeah, just refer to our conversation above as I think it will pertain better to your situation.
-
The only issue is that you have to keep in mind that Google/Bing defines pages on the internet through their URL's, not the content. The content only describes the pages.
So if you let the engines pre crawl the pages before dropping the subdomain - simply for the reason of letting them have a "sneak peek" - you won't really be doing yourself much of a favor, as the engines will just be recrawling the content on the non subdomain URL as if it were brand new anyway.
The reason to do it the pre crawl way would be if you're already building back links to the new beta pages. Then it could make sense to let the engines index those pages and 301 them to their new non subdomain versions later. In my opinion the benefit from this route would outweigh any potential duplicate content issues.
-
But the URL structer is different... does that matter?
-
What YesBaby is talking about is somehting like Google's Website Optimizer. When someone goes to sierratradingpost.com/mens-stuff, for example, it will give 50% of the people the old version of the site for that page, and the other 50% the new version. It will eliminate any duplicate content issues as the 2 page variations will still be attached to the same exact URL.
Definitely a viable option if it fits with your game plan of how you want to do things.
-
SInce all of the URLs except for the homepage - what do you think about letting the new site get crawled maybe 2 weeks before it is 100% launched? We would have some duplicate content issues but I am hoping this would give us a head start with the new site.... then when we go 100% we add the 301's and new sitemap. It is my understanding we will be dropping the sub domain for the soft launch.
Thank you so much!
-
First of all - I love the new design. It looks great!
The absolutel best way to go about it in my opinion would be to simply have the new site ready, and then launch it fully under the base domain (no subdomain) while 301 redirecting important old pages on the site to their related new versions. That way the search engine will have the easiest time of discovering the new site and indexing it, while making sure you don't lose anything in the transition via proper 301'ing.
I can't say it would provide you with a massive benefit to set up a way for the search engines to start crawling the new site for now, as you're just going to be moving all of those URL's off of the subdomain in the near future anyway - where they will then need to be recrawled on the parent domain as if they were brand new.
If the traffic diverter you have set up automatically 301's requests for old site pages to their new beta URL version then you might as well let those new versions be indexed for the time being. Just make sure that when you transfer the beta site to the parent domain that you 301 the old beta URL's to their new permanent home.
-
So with the service - the new site is not crawled until we launch it?
-
The new site is beta.sierratradingpost.com where we will be dropping the beta. On the old one has catalog departments... ie Men's Classics, which, at this time, are not being carried over to the new site. I guess we are wonding when we should allow the robots to crawl the new site?
-
Hey Stephan,
I'm assuming you want to measure how the traffic is converting on the new site, hence the strategy to send small portions of traffic to new pages?
If so, the easiest way might to just straight up A/B split test the new pages with a service like Adobe/Omniture Test&Target. This doesn't cause any cloaking/dupe isseues. When you are happy with the results you can realese the site with all the 301's in place.
-
Let me make sure I have this straight... you're not going to be directing the new site format to a subdomain permanently, right? You were only using the sub domain for beta purposes?
The way I see it, when I go to Sierra Trading Post's site now I can make out what looks like 2 different types of architecture structures. You have one link on the page pointing to Men's clothing which executes at a single defined .htm file. Then you can see that you have the "Men's Classics" (still general men's clothing?) which points to a directory which I'm guessing is your new site. Correct me if I'm wrong on this, or if I'm right but have the old vs. new reversed.
If that is the case your best bet to try and minimalize any ranking impact would be to 301 redirect pages from the old catalog architecture to the new. That way you could remove the old site files completely and let the server take care of the direction.
If you need to leave the old site up for throttling purposes like you said - you could use canoniclazation tags to refer the old pages to the new ones. That along with employing 301 tags would help train the search engines into understanding what you're doing.
I'm sorry if I didn't answer your question as you needed. I'm still not sure if I understood your issue as intended. =P
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
-
Move to new domain using Canonical Tag
At the moment, I am moving from olddomain.com (niche site) to the newdomain.com (multi-niche site). Due to some reasons, I do not want to use 301 right now and planning to use the canonical pointing to the new domain instead. Would Google rank the new site instead of the old site? From what I have learnt, the canonical tag lets Google know that which is the main source of the contents. Thank you very much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | india-morocco0 -
Site migration/ CMS/domain site structure change-no access to search console
Hi everyone, We are migrating an old site under a bigger umbrella (our main domain). As mentioned in the title, We'll perform CMS migration, domain change, and site structure change. Now, the major problem is that we can't get into google search console for the old site. The site still has old GA code, so google search console verification using this method is not possible, also there is no way developers will be able to add GTM or edit DNS setting (not to bother you with the reason why). Now, my dilemma is : 1. Do we need access to old search console to notify Google about the domain name change or this could be done from our main site (old site will become a part of) search console 2. We are setting up 301 redirects from old to the new domain (not perfect 1:1 redirect ). Once migration is done does anything else needs to be done with the old domain (it will become obsolete)? 3.The main site, Site-map... Should I create a new sitemap with newly added pages or update the current one. 4. if you have anything else please add:) Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bgvsiteadmin0 -
Old site penalised, we moved: Shall we cut loose from the old site. It's curently 301 to new site.
Hi, We had a site with many bad links pointing to it (.co.uk). It was knocked from the SERPS. We tried to manually ask webmasters to remove links.Then submitted a Disavow and a recon request. We have since moved the site to a new URL (.com) about a year ago. As the company needed it's customer to find them still. We 301 redirected the .co.uk to the .com There are still lots of bad links pointing to the .co.uk. The questions are: #1 Do we stop the 301 redirect from .co.uk to .com now? The .co.uk is not showing in the rankings. We could have a basic holding page on the .co.uk with 'we have moved' (No link). Or just switch it off. #2 If we keep the .co.uk 301 to the .com, shall we upload disavow to .com webmasters tools or .co.uk webmasters tools. I ask this because someone else had uploaded the .co.uk's disavow list of spam links to the .com webmasters tools. Is this bad? Thanks in advance for any advise or insight!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SolveWebMedia0 -
How can I remove my old sites URL from showing up in Google?
Hi everyone. We have had a new site up for over a year now. When I search site:sqlsentry.net the old url still shows up and while those pages are redirected to .com I'd like to get the .net URL's out of google forever. What is the best way I can go about that?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sika220 -
Moving to a new domain name - 301 redirect NOT an option
Hi everyone My question concerns moving from an old to a new domain name without losing all previous SEO efforts. I am aware that a properly executed 301 redirect is the answer and way to go as well as telling Google about it in Webmaster Tools. However, what is the situation, if you do not own the old domain name anymore? If you have no means of getting back the old domain name and wanting to basically mask/switch the already existing website to the new domain name, will search engines penalise the "new site" as a duplicate, since the "old site" is still in the search engine rankings? I know that not being able to execute a proper 301 redirect and starting out with a new domain means a fresh start, but what is the best way to minimise the negative impact (if any)? Basically dropping the sites' current content and starting out new in favour of the new domain name is not really an option. Even if you were to take the content from the old site and place it on another site, this would surely be seen as duplicate too. Anyone thinks that Webmaster Tools/Google is savvy enough to spot the difference when the "old site" gets removed and the "new one" added instead (in Webmaster Tools). I read something along the lines about having your host point the DNS from the old site to the new one. Could something like be helpful? Thanks all in advance for your help and input!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Hermski0 -
What is the best: one big site or several small ones?
Sometimes I've felt that my choice was incorrect. I know taht with a big amount of content on the same subject a bigger one is better: it’s easier to maintain, and a big number of pages is good for Google ranking, but when you have many small sites, each one focusing on a totally different subject, you can crosslink them and this will improve your rankings. Furthermore, many small sites allow you to focus in specific niches and help you rank better for different keywords. So, what is the best choice?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sergio_redondo0 -
Time for a new domain post-Penguin?
Hi there, Quick overview of a client who came to us after having the vast majority of their link value slashed by Penguin. Client only has a limited 'recovery budget' Client had been outsourcing SEO to a foreign company The website was 'keyword stuffed' when we arrived Links were of poor quality, the company clearly majoring on quantity rather than quality. Client was ranking #4 or #3 for a keyword which was bringing in sales. Post penguin, dropped to page 5 and then out of the top 100 for that keyword, losing 70% of sales. The client, under our supervision has Rewritten spammy content so they work for human beings (so it now reads well) Gone through the website and is removing old/duplicate and low-quality content De-emphasised other pages for the target keyword so that only one page majors on it. After doing the above has submitted a reconsideration request (about 2 weeks ago, so I know there's time). We are focussing on ensuring her content is written well and on building decent links to the site (i.e. to put some good-uns where the bad ones were). We're into month 2 of the 'clean-up exercise' and the site is still only ranking #90 for the keyword. Given the client's budgetary limitation, could it be more beneficial to consider a new brand identity and domain name to start afresh (without a 301 redirect) or should we just continue along the track we are doing with this client? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nobody15609869897230 -
Changing a URL structure within a site
Im moving a page over from www.domain.com/page to www.domain/category/page currently www.domain.com/page is ranking in google. Would a 301 do the job? is there anything else needed to help keep SE positions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0