How can we minimize the SEO impact during a major platform migration?
-
We are preparing for a major platform migration with an ecommerce client. The website is in the range of 7000 pages. During this migration, all URLs will change due to differences in the platform and improvements to the site structure. Unfortunately, they run on a Microsoft server, so doing 301 redirects also tends to be a painful process.
What can we do to minimize the initial dent this puts in the website traffic?
We are
- prepared to submit XML sitemaps to Google and Bing as soon as the new site is live.
- writing 301 redirects for all pages which have inbound links (this is tough to automate due to the URL structures).
In the long run, we expect the new platform, URL structure, and site architecture to be a huge improvement for our organic rankings. The client and we are worried about the transition period though!
Any tips or advice to help us through it?
Thanks!
-
Hey thanks. is there some tool or feature in google webmaster account that shows us info about the caching frequency?
also, we only set up 301's for 400 of the 8,000 urls. only those 400 hand external links to them. it would be a massive project to redirect all those other 7,600 urls. do we need to do that?
-
The steps you are taking and the answers above are pretty much spot on.
The only thing not said here which will be worth doing is getting in contact with important webmasters who link to you and getting them to change the links to the new URL. Depending on how many links you have and their value I would not necessarily do this for all links, but definitely the powerful, important ones and the easy ones i.e. Social profiles you may have created.
Something else which maybe interesting to try is getting some quick social signals out to your important URLs once they go live. Tweets etc.. just something to think about.
-
I've been through this a few times, and as per Maximise, make sure those 301 permanent redirects are 1.) correct and 2.) in place. That will make the whole process 100% easier.
Be prepared for some bumps. If your site gets cached everyday you will work through them faster than if it only gets cached every 5 days - 2 weeks. Your less relevant pages may take a little longer to get re-indexed. BUT, seeing as how you have set up 301's you should be fine!
Dan
-
If done carefully you may not see much (or any) drop in traffic. I've recently restructured the entire URL structure of a website and saw no drop in traffic or rankings. This was also on a Microsoft Server and I used this software for the URL rewriting - http://www.isapirewrite.com/
As long as all your 301 redirects are configured correctly (test thoroughly in your test environment before going live) the transition from the old URL's to the new URL's should be pretty seemless. It would be a good idea to submit a new sitemap shortly after the changes have been made to let the search engines know what your doing.
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
-
Need references to a company that can transition our 1000 page website from Http to Https without breaking our SEO backlinks and site structure
Hi Ya'll I'm looking for a company or independent who can transition our website from http to https. I want to make sure they know what they're doing with a Wordpress website. More importantly, i want to make sure they don't break any seo juice from external sources while internally nothing gets broken. Anyone have any good recommendations? You can reply back or DM me. Best, Shawn
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn1240 -
Mirrors Hosting SEO
Hello, I notice that some sites do provide hosting for mirroring file downloading for cpanel, apache and other big developers. I assume that benefits of it is link building but look at this site: http://apache.mirrors.hoobly.com/ Hoobly provide mirrors for most developers but none of them are indexed by google for ex: http://apache.mirrors.hoobly.com/ So can someone explain why would be that or what is going on ? is that something hidden here ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eriklogo50 -
SEO question
Hi there! I'm the SEO manager for 5 Star Loans. I have 2 city pages running. We are running our business in 2 locations: Berkeley, CA & San Jose, CA. For those offices we've created 2 google listings with separate gmail accounts. Berkeley (http://5starloans.com/berkeley/) ranks well in Berkeley in Gmaps and it shows on first page in organic results. However the second city page San Jose (http://5starloans.com/san-jose/) doesn't show in the Gmaps local pack results and also doesn't rank well in organic results. Both of them have authentic backlinks and reviews. It has been a year already and it's high time we knew the problem 🙂 any comment would be helpful. thanks a lot
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moonalev0 -
Client rebranded with a new website but can't migrate now defunct franchise website to new website.
Hi everyone, My client is a chain of franchised restaurants with a local domain website named after the franchise. The franchise exited the market while the client stayed and built its own brand with a separate website. The franchise website (which is extremely popular) will be shut down soon but the client will not be able to redirect the franchise website to the new website for legal reasons. What can I do to ensure that we start ranking immediately for the franchise keyphrase as soon as the franchise website is shutdown. We currently have the new website and access to the old website (which we can't redirect) Thanks, T
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tarek_Lel0 -
Technical SEO
Where can I find knowledge of enhanced and technical SEO for all type of websites ( mainly E-Commerce)? Please share some good sources (PDFs, Videos, Checklist etc)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Obbserv0 -
Volusion SEO
I have an SEO setting on our Volusion e-commerce store enabled, it is titled "Enable full URL for Home Page Canonical Link (include /default.asp)" I am questioning whether or not this should be enabled for optimal SEO performance. Can anyone provide any advice on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PartyStore0 -
Is IP trust a factor in SEO
Hi If my website is on an IP address that has a bad reputation with AOL for email, would Google use that as a factor in where they place us in SERPs? If so, what should I do? Matt
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | usedcarexpert0 -
Subdomains and SEO - Should we redirect to subfolder?
A new client has mainsite.com and a large numer of city specific sub domains i.e. albany.mainsite.com. I think that these subdomains would actually work better as subfolders i.e mainsite.com/albany rather than albany.mainsite.com. The majority of links on the subdomains link to the main site anyway i.e. mainsite.com/contactus rather than albany.mainsite.com/contactus. Having mostly main domain links on a subdomain doesnt seem like clever link architecture to me and maybe even spammy. Im not overly familiar with redirecting subdomains to subfolders. If we go the route of 301'ing subdomains to subfolders any advice/warnings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndyMacLean0