How to proceed with domain switch AND url change
-
Hi,
in a few weeks we'll do a major change on our website. This involves over 1.5 million pages indexed in Google driving substantial amount of our traffic.
Basically we have 2 types of changes:
- subdomain switches to domain:
ex. product.company.com will become www.product.com
for this we know how to manage DNS and Apache rules - different url patterns, basically replacing ugly urls by pretty urls
for this we have advanced 301-mapping rules set up
Here is the question - what is best way to proceed with these 2 changes in order to preserve rankings and organic traffic:
- Do both changes simultaneously?
- First do url changes, than the domain switch
Can you please share your thoughts?
- subdomain switches to domain:
-
I would do both at the same time that way if you take any hit/penalty for the changes it is only once. You may also want to submit a change of address through webmaster tools for the subdomain switch.
-
As long as you have your 301 redirections setup correctly and your sitemaps updated appropriately, I don't think there will be any additional penalty for making both changes at the same time.
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
-
Urls Too Long - Should I shorten?
On the crawl of our website we have had a warning that 157 have urls that are too long. When I look at the urls they are generally from 2016 or earlier. Should I just leave them as they are or shorten the urls and redirect to new url? Thanks
Technical SEO | | DaleZon4 -
Content change within the same URL/Page (UX vs SEO)
Context: I'm asking my client to create city pages so he can present all of his appartements in that specific sector so i can have a page that ranks for "appartement for rent in +sector". The page will present a map with all the sector so the user can navigate and choose the sector he wants after he landed on the page. Question: The UX team is asking if we absolutly need to reload the sector page when the user is clicking the location on the map or if they can switch the content within the same page/url once the user is on the landing page. My concern: 1. Can this be analysed as duplicate content if Google can crawl within the javascript app or if Google only analyse his "first view" of the page. 2. Do you consider that it would be preferable to keep the "page change" so i'm increasing the number of page viewed ?
Technical SEO | | alexrbrg0 -
Redirect Chain Domain
MozPro is highlighting some redirect chain issues with our domain that I do not recall ever setting up in our redirect list. In our Moz Pro Campaign I see the Site Crawl has flagged 36 Redirect Chain Issues. I understand how the redirect chain errors can happen but I do not recall ever manually redirecting our domain, yet I have http://stickylife.com, https://stickylife.com & https://www.stickylife.com all associated in one of our redirect chain errors. When looking at our redirect files I do not see any of these domain redirects and wonder how this has happened and how to fix it. It appears as though our HTTP and HTTPS is causing some redirection. I wonder if this is coming from our DNS settings?
Technical SEO | | StickyLife0 -
Does the domain extension effect domain authority and ranking
We have produces a website on a .company domain extension. We have produced a good sized website with unique content. However the DA remains at 1. There are no high priority issues in the page crawl. We suspect that the domain extension may be causing a lower DA. Is this a ranking factor?
Technical SEO | | easydomains0 -
Redirecting old domain to new domain with wordpress
Hi all, I need to change domain name to a website published on wordpress. I'd think to make these steps: trasferring the website (files+db) to a new hosting space to redirect old site (www.oldsite.com) to the new one (www.newsite.com) using rewrite rules. With these steps I'd need to transfer and reinstall files and wordpress so I would like to discover if there's some less time expending procedure to consider. Thanks and ciao Bob
Technical SEO | | bobrock40 -
Migrating a better performing domain to a less well performing domain
I have a customer who has many domain names and assets but she's wanting to consolidate some of them to help her simplify things for her customers but mostly she wants to build up her website through which she sells products. Grief Reflection - www.griefreflection.com is a personal journal that she's keeping to process the impending death of her husband and it's also linked to her business website which sells healing from grief types of products. Storybooks for Healing - www.storybooksforhealing.com is the website through which she sells workbooks and memory books for people who want to keep the memory of their loved one alive after they've gone. I've setup both of these domains as campaigns and have been looking at the metrics for both. The grief reflection blog out performs the storybooks for healing website. If we merge the two then the Grief Reflection blog would likely become a subdirectory under www.storybooksforhealing.com and be more fully integrated which she thinks will help her visitors not get confused while navigating her website. www.griefreflection.com has 12,637 links while www.storybooksforhealing.com has 1,462. Also, Google has indexed 380 pages of Grief Reflection and only 100 pages for Storybooks for Healing, though that may be because there are fewer pages to index. Grief reflection also has a 4.36 mozRank and 5.30 mozTrust, where Storybooks has 4.13 mozRank and 5.15 mozTrust. Should I counsel her to keep these domains separate? If not, would simply setting up 301 redirects from the www.griefreflection.com domain name to the new subdirectory under www.storybooksforhealing.com be the way to go? Thank you ever so much for any wisdom anyone can provide.
Technical SEO | | ChristiMc0 -
How much of a hit to changing urls?
Hi, We have a few pages that from an SEO perspective have poor URLs. We are planning on changing them (and 301 redirecting) the old page to the new page. I heard in the past, this can temporarily negatively impact your SERP rank etc. Since the old URLs are bad, even if there is a temporary negative hit, changing them in the long run it is better, but curious if anyone has any experience on what to expect.
Technical SEO | | NicB10