Type of redirect?
-
I'm almost ready to launch a website redesign. We are going to move what's currently being hosted on olddomain.com to newdomain.com. We want to do this early to avoid error and to have olddomain.com redirect to newdomain.com until the new content is ready.
Once the redesign is complete, we'll push the new content to olddomain.com (as it holds a higher SEO value) and take away the redirect.
A. Does this sound like a good idea?
B. What kind of redirect should I use? 302? 307?
Thanks, and sorry for the confusion
-
The 301 cancellation itself is immediate. It may take time for search engines to crawl your site and notice the change on any given page.
-
How long does it take to cancle the 301?
I had a 301, I just canceled it & uploaded my new content.
-
If you needed to proceed with your plan, then a 302 allows you to redirect traffic for a short period such as what you are describing. I would define "short" as being 7 days or less.
If you are going to move for 30 days or more, I would use a 301 redirect. Once the upgrade is complete, cancel the 301 and send your traffic back.
-
I get why you're confused -- it lies with the presence of our old site and the permissions we have to change content.
So we're not just taking the site down for maintenance upon completion -- we're pointing the domain to a different server (both domains will be pointing to different places). The main question for me is how to do this smoothly?
But, mostly I just needed confirmation that the developer's idea wasn't the best one
and reading your responses has helped me understand this a bit better.
-
I am still a bit confused.
You are currently using olddomain.com. You wish to upgrade the site.
You have beta.olddomain.com. You perform your development work on beta.olddomain.com while your live site continues to receive traffic.
Upon completion of development you would take "olddomain.com" down for maintenance. You update the site with the changes from the beta site, then you re-open the site and are live.
The above method represents the stand process under which most sites are upgraded. What you are describing sounds more like what happens in the offline world. You own an office which needs to be remodeled. You then move to a temporary office because the construction workers require access to your old office to make the changes. That method is not required in the virtual world.
-
You're correct in the direction things need to go.
The point isn't to preserve link juice in 2 ways -- it's to maintain a domain that we've had for years and that has tons of links pointing to it.
Pretty confusing stuff if you ask me.
-
We want to use olddomain.com because we've had it for years, our customers know it, and we have tons of links pointing to it. We set up beta.olddomain.com for testing.
The only reason we even need newdomain.com is because our old site was mandated to us by the manufacturer and we need to keep it per their rules. We don't care about that site at all though -- we just need to transfer it at the same time that we get the new content onto the old domain, does that make sense?
-
I agree with Dan's approach.
It sounds like you want to use your current "olddomain.com" as your development area. That doesn't make sense to me. If you use your "newdomain.com" site for development, then when you are ready upgrade/switch your current domain with the newly re-designed content, you wont need to use any form of redirect. It's less work for you and search engines.
-
so your saying that:
beta.olddomain.com will go to: olddomain.com
existing content at olddomain.com will go to newdomain.comif that's correct it may be a bit over my head. perhaps someone else can chime in?
it sounds like you are trying to preserve link juice two ways, which i don't think you can do . perhaps a staggered launch that will allow the 301 to redirect the content, and then a relaunch via the beta content later (no 301s)?
-
Hi Dan, thanks for the response.
I agree that it sounds risky, that's why I posted here
It was the route my developer suggested.
The site is being developed on a local server but we also have a subdomain set up (beta.olddomain.com). We'll be using the same domain, but the content that used to be there will be going to a new domain because it is a website that was mandated to us by our corporate manufacturer.
We have already planned to set up the 301 redirects from our old urls to the new ones. The main concern I have is the transfer of the new content to the old domain (from beta.olddomain.com to olddomain.com). Do you have any suggestions for a smooth transition in this regard?
-
hi Kyle,
all the domain forwarding sounds kind of dangerous to me.i've done a few site redesigns and can offer the following advice:
1.) if it ain't broke, don't move it.2.) if you can develop your new site via a local server, or a cheap host (set up a pw so only you can see it while you develop), i would do that. again, just moving domains seems risky.
301 redirects communicate to the search engines that you are permanently redirecting your content to your new site. you want to consider doing a 301 for ALL content/urls. this will help preserve rankings. a lot of times you can use a program like rewrite to handle this if you have tons of urls.
your best bet is to get all your "new" content ready to go, live, and then 301 redirect to it at your new domain. if that is happening on THE SAME domain (old content -> new content ; same domain), you want to 301 redirect your old url's to their equivalent new urls.
hope that helps! :>)
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
-
302 redirects, canonicalise or redirect (301)?
Hey Guys, I am fairly new to 'technical' SEO as I was lucky enough in my old role to have technical expertise in the team for things like this, now I am learning myself and it is a slow and painful process, so your expertise is soooo much appreciated! My I.T. dept say that I have 3 instances on my website where the Hybris platform is creating a 302 redirect automatically - the first: URL doesn't exist - Hybris creates a temp 302 - the system does not create case sensitive url's | http://www.example.fr/Example/Marques/0180/brand/CHANEL | URL doesn't exist | TRUE | 302 | | http://www.example.fr/Example/Marques/0015/brand/Giorgio-Armani | URL doesn't exist | TRUE | 302 |
Web Design | | eLab_London
| http://www.example.fr/fr/Example/marken/0507/brand/lancome | URL doesn't exist | TRUE | 302 | I believe these are being redirected due to the fact that capital letters are being created in the url. Multi-lingual redirects I have a German and French version of my site and whenever any switches from one URL to the other using our language selector a 302 is created. Dynamic URL elements Dynamic url elements and special characters are being created in the URL, I am not sure where this is happening, but my I.T. department would like me to go and see whether this is something that can be created by a browser. If anyone has any similar problems or have any advice or insights even, I would love to hear from you! Thanks 🙂0 -
Is it possible to redirect the main www. domain - but keep a subdomain active?
Hi Mozzers, Quick question, which I hope one of you can answer... Let's say I have a website (i) www.example.com and on that a subdomain exists, (ii) subdomain.example.com. Let's say I want to change my main domain from www.example.com to www.newwebsite.com. I'd 301 all content, use GWT to notify Google of a change of address etc etc. Having done that, is it still possible to keep the original subdomain active? So, even though www.example.com has been redirected / transferred to www.newwebsite.com, subdomain.example.com would still exist. If that is possible, what is the implication for Domain Authority? On the one hand, I have transferred the main site (so DA from that will transfer to the new site); but part of that root domain is still active. Make sense? Any answers? Thanks everyone...
Web Design | | edlondon0 -
301 Redirect ! Joomla Pages, Already ranking. ( just wanted to change the url
hey guys hope everyone had a new year. I am ranking for a page on my site that i want to ( not specifically move ), but just change the url name: It is too long i think and i want to move it from one portion of my architecture to another menu. I have never physically done a 301 redirect myself, always had someone do it for me. I wanted some pointers. Since it is a fairly new site 4 months old! What are my options. Do i need to 301 redirect the page, if i am changing the Structure and AI of my site, or can i just change the url as is and it will still get ranked? How do i keep that url put delete the page and redirect it ? Sorry its very simple but i wanted to get the communities help to continue on ! Best Wishes HAmpig
Web Design | | BizDetox0 -
Show root domain (that is 301 redirected) in SERP?
Hi, If I have the domain name www.businessname.com.au pointing (using 301 redirect) to a particular page on a business directory site (eg www.bizdirectory.com.au/businessname), is it possible to have the URL www.businessname.com.au displayed in the Google search results rather than the destination page of www.bizdirectory.com.au/businessname? Thanks in advance,
Web Design | | blackrails
Adam0 -
Optimal redirect configuration from a misspelled domain that we own.
We have a handful of inbound links to www.t-chek.com (note the hyphen). Our normal site is www.tchek.com (no hyphen). We own both domains and have some sort of domain-wide redirect set up now. This works fine for traffic, but I suspect it's not optimal for SEO purposes. I came to this conclusion by looking in OSE and noticing that none of the inbound links to www.t-chek.com were also being attributed to www.tchek.com. 2 questions: Is it immediately evident what type of redirect I have in place now, or do I need to figure that out? Is the fix as simple as editing the .htaccess file on the hyphenated domain? I don't have direct control over the hyphenated domain, and I'd like to be able to know exactly what we need to do so I can request help from my IT department. I'd appreciate hearing your wisdom. Thanks!
Web Design | | SheriGolla0 -
Parked Domain or Redirect
Should I park a domain or Redirect? And what is the best way? I need to switch our domain name. I currently have all of our domains redirecting to our main website. I have set up there own hosting in our cpanel account so I could redirect them to our main domain. Was this too many steps? I tried putting all of our domains in our main domains, .htaccess file, and redirected them to our main website, but they did not work. So that is why I set up there own cpanel accounts. Now they work fine. However, my hosting company told me that I could just park the domain on our current domains account. If I can redirect all of these domain in one place, that would be great. I thought that a parked domain is considered duplicate websites, as both urls work, displaying the entire website with both urls. So Would I have to re upload our entire website to the account that I want as our main domain? Or is there another way of going about doing this?
Web Design | | hfranz0 -
Is it necessary to redirect every Error page (404 or 500) found?
If I have Hundreds of pages with 404 and 500 erros should set up 301 redirects for all of them? Some of the pages have external links, some don't.
Web Design | | jmansd0