Domain Transfer Process / Bulk 301's Using IIS
-
Hi guys - I am getting ready to do a complete domain transfer from one domain to another completely different domain for a client due to a branding/name change. 2 things - first, I wanted to lay out a summary of my process and see if everyone agrees that its a good approach, and second, my client is using IIS, so I wanted to see if anyone out there knows a bulk tool that can be used to implement 301's on the hundreds of pages that the site contains? I have found the process to redirect each individual page, but over hundreds its a daunting task to look at.
The nice thing about the domain transfer is that it is going to be a literal 1:1 transfer, with the only things changing being the logo and the name mentions. Everything else is going to stay exactly the same, for the most part. I will use dummy domain names in the explanation to keep things easy to follow: www.old-domain.com and www.new-domain.com. The client's existing home page has a 5/10 GPR, so of course, transferring Mojo is very important.
The process:
- Clean up existing site 404's, duplicate tags and titles, etc. (good time to clean house).
- Create identical domain structure tree, changing all URL's (for instance) from www.old-domain.com/freestuff to www.newdomain.com/freestuff.
- Push several pages to a dev environment to test (dev.new-domain.com). Also, replace all instances of old brand name (images and text) with new brand name.
- Set up 301 redirects (here is where my IIS question comes in below). Each page will be set up to redirect to the new permanent destination with a 301. TEST a few.
- Choose lowest traffic time of week (from analytics data) to make the transfer ALL AT ONCE, including pushing new content live to the server for www.new-domain.com and implementing the 301's. As opposed to moving over parts of the site in chunks, moving the site over in one swoop avoids potential duplicate content issues, since the content on the new domain is essentially exactly the same as the old domain. Of course, all of the steps so far would apply to the existing sub-domains as well, IE video.new-domain.com.
- Check for errors and problems with resolution issues. Check again. Check again.
- Write to (as many as possible) link partners and inform them of new domain and ask links to be switched (for existing links) and updated (for future links) to the new domain. Even though 301's will redirect link juice, the actual link to the new domain page without the redirect is preferred.
- Track rank of targeted keywords, overall domain importance and GPR over time to ensure that you re-establish your Mojo quickly.
- That's it!
Ok, so everyone, please give me your feedback on that process!!
Secondly, as you can see in the middle of that process, the "implement 301's" section seems easier said than done, especially when you are redirecting each page individually (would take days). So, the question here is, does anyone know of a way to implement bulk 301's for each individual page using IIS? From what I understand, in an Apache environment .htaccess can be used, but I really have not been able to find any info regarding how to do this in bulk using IIS. Any help here would be GREATLY APPRECIATED!!
-
any answer here Jacob?
-
Is it better from an SEO perspective to have actual 301's in place for each page, as opposed to one for all?
-
Yes. Since the files will be the same, you're just swapping the domain.
-
Hi Jacob -- awesome, thanks so much for sending this. Just to clarify - I'm assuming that this is ONLY USABLE if the new file structure is in fact IDENTICAL, correct?
-
Heyas,
So I got great news for you. Since Step 2 results in identical file structures, you shouldn't need crazy 301's.
In fact, all you need to do is setup a wildcard redirect. In IIS, edit web.config file, modify or add
the following section to its rewrite section<rewrite><rules><rule name="old to new" enabled="true"><match url="(.*)"><conditions><add input="{HTTP_HOST}" negate="true" pattern="^www\.([.a-zA-Z0-9]+)$"></add></conditions> <action type="Redirect" url="<a href=" http:="" www.newdomain.com="" {r:0"="">http://www.NEWDOMAIN.com/{R:0}" appendQueryString="true" redirectType="Permanent" /></action></match></rule></rules></rewrite> Additionally, you can use the web install manager to install the RewriteModule. Coming from *, I actually will give praise to M$ on the GUI / ease of use.
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
-
Link's that are an internal site search?
Hi hope your're all well. I sell Red, Blue, Green Widgets within each color I have many sub types, the subtypes change all the time,and a sub type has many variations in itself. I'd like to set up links that direct customers to popular searches of sub types say: widgets.com/red/blue-spots....search string... Will Google crawl these search links and see that there is good content behind it? How does Google handle links that are also a site search? Can it be bad and should I "no follow" them? Hope someone can give me some direction on these, many thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | Thea880 -
John Mueller says don't use Schema as its not working yet but I get markup conflicts using Google Mark-up
I watched recently John Mueller's Google Webmaster Hangout [DEC 5th]. In hit he mentions to a member not to use Schema.org as it's not working quite yet but to use Google's own mark-up tool 'Structured Data Markup Helper'. Fine this I have done and one of the tags I've used is 'AUTHOR'. However if you use Google's Structured Data Testing Tool in GWMT you get an error saying the following Error: Page contains property "author" which is not part of the schema. Yet this is the tag generated by their own tool. Has anyone experienced this before? and if so what action did you take to rectify it and make it work. As it stands I'm considering just removing this tag altogether. Thanks David cqbsdbunpicv8s76dlddd1e8u4g
Technical SEO | | David-E-Carey0 -
Using canonical for duplicate contents outside of my domain
I have 2 domains for the same company, example.com and example.sg Sometimes we have to post the same content or event on both websites so to protect my website from duplicate content plenty i use canonical tag to point to either .com or .sg depend on the page. Any idea if this is the right decision Thanks
Technical SEO | | MohammadSabbagh0 -
Rank a site that was 301'd
We had a customer that had 2 sites. They left us, and 301'd site A to site B. Things didn't go well. Now, a year later they want to use us again. Ideally, I would undo the 301. Has anyone done this? Would I be better off starting with a new domain? If you've done it, how long before it started to rank like you expected/hoped?
Technical SEO | | TimColeman0 -
Domain Forwarding / Multiple Domain Names / or Rebuild Blogs on them
I am considering forwarding 3 very aged and valuable domain names to my main site. There were once over 100 blog posts on each blog and each one has a page authority of 45 and domain authority of 37. My question is should i put up three blogs on the domains and link them to my site or should i just forward the domains to my main site? Which will provide me with more value. I have the capability to have some one blog on them every day. However, i do not have access to any of the old blog posts. I guess i could scrape it of archive.org. Any advice would be appreciated. Scott
Technical SEO | | WindshieldGuy-2762210 -
Internet Explorer and Chrome showing different SERP's
Well the title says it all really. Same query, different browsers, same computer and different search results. I thought at first it may have differed because I was logged into my google profile on chrome but I logged out and tested and still different results. Is this normal ?
Technical SEO | | blinkybill0 -
What should be use 301 or 302 redirection for 404 pages
Please suggest which redirection we should use for 404 pages- 301 or 302. If you can elaborate it with reason then it will be highly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | koamit0 -
How do i properly combine these two schema's from schema.org
So we're redoing our reviews/testimonials page on our website right now and moving over to the schema.org format as described here: http://schema.org/Review But we would like to combine each of our reviews with a location for which it was reviewed using this: http://schema.org/LocalBusiness What i can't wrap my head around would be the correct syntax? is it just the first block and then the next block? or is there a way of putting the actual physical address within the review page itself? So is this the correct way to do a page full of reviews that are reviewing various physical locations? * <div< span="">itemprop="reviews" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Review"></div<>* <span< span="">itemprop="name">Value purchase</span<> -* by <span< span="">itemprop="author">Lucas</span<>,* <meta< span="">itemprop="datePublished" content="2011-03-25">March 25, 2011</meta<>* <div< span="">itemprop="reviewRating" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Rating"></div<>* <meta< span="">itemprop="worstRating" content = "1"/></meta<>* <span< span="">itemprop="ratingValue">4</span<>/* <span< span="">itemprop="bestRating">5</span<>stars* <span< span="">itemprop="description">Great microwave for the price. It is small and</span<>* fits in my apartment. 1. <div< span="">itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/LocalBusiness"></div<> 2. # <span< span="">itemprop="name">Beachwalk Beachwear & Giftware</span<> 3. <span< span="">itemprop="description"> A superb collection of fine gifts and clothing</span<> 4. to accent your stay in Mexico Beach. 5. <div< span="">itemprop="address" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress"></div<> 6. <span< span="">itemprop="streetAddress">3102 Highway 98</span<> 7. <span< span="">itemprop="addressLocality">Mexico Beach</span<>, 8. <span< span="">itemprop="addressRegion">FL</span<> 10. Phone: <span< span="">itemprop="telephone">850-648-4200</span<> <div< span="">itemprop="reviews" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Review"></div<>* <span< span="">itemprop="name">Value purchase</span<> -* by <span< span="">itemprop="author">Lucas</span<>,* <meta< span="">itemprop="datePublished" content="2011-03-25">March 25, 2011</meta<>* <div< span="">itemprop="reviewRating" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Rating"></div<>* <meta< span="">itemprop="worstRating" content = "1"/></meta<>* <span< span="">itemprop="ratingValue">4</span<>/* <span< span="">itemprop="bestRating">5</span<>stars* <span< span="">itemprop="description">Great microwave for the price. It is small and</span<>* fits in my apartment. <div< span="">itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/LocalBusiness"></div<> <span< span="">itemprop="name">Beachwalk Beachwear & Giftware</span<> <span< span="">itemprop="description"> A superb collection of fine gifts and clothing</span<> to accent your stay in Mexico Beach. <div< span="">itemprop="address" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress"></div<> <span< span="">itemprop="streetAddress">3102 Highway 98</span<> <span< span="">itemprop="addressLocality">Mexico Beach</span<>, <span< span="">itemprop="addressRegion">FL</span<> Phone: <span< span="">itemprop="telephone">850-648-4200</span<>
Technical SEO | | adriandg0