How to tell google about the changes
-
Hello All
this is my first question here. we have recently changed our website design and backend. so the problem now is in google it is showing the old url's and when ever a client come from google he is prasented with a 404 error page
if this happenes many times. will google penalise our site ? if yes. how to prevent this from happen.
waiting for some replies.. thanks
-
That's a good sign. Carry out all the above and you'll be back on track swiftly.
Hope it all goes well for you
-
thanks for the reply once again.. i will try to do that ASAP. just noticed the new site url's also poping up in google when clicked in <more pages="" from="" our="" domain="">.. but mostly its a mix of old ones and new pages...</more>
-
You're welcome, glad to be able to help.
301 redirecting that many pages would take a while for sure and probably unnecessary for many of them.
I'd suggest individually 301 redirecting your most important pages, such as the obvious ones like your main product pages, about us, contact us... plus pages that have any valuable links pointing into them.
Then for the remainder, you can do a Wildcard 301 redirect, for example, redirecting all pages within a certain directory such as /news/
Regards
Simon
-
hey
thank you so much for nice explanation.
-
our domain name is same. so we have trafic from google but they are getting 404 page
-
we have already genarated new sitemap and submited to google via webmaster tools
-
the only thing i am not sure is how to set a up a 301 direct for those many pages. like we have more 2000 pages which shows up in google. as we sale products and we have the old site up from 2008..
do i need to hand pick all the url's to create a 301 redirect ?
-
-
Hi There
It sounds like your old URLs have not been 301 Redirected to the new URLs. If so, it's now a case of damage limitation.
As a matter of urgency, you'll need to map your old pages to point to the most appropriate new ones, then 301 redirect those old URLs to the mapped new ones.
Then update your sitemap.xml and submit/re-submit it via Google Webmaster Tools (GWMT). Also ensure that your robots.txt file is up-to-date.
If it's not too late, which it probably isn't yet as you say that Google is showing your old URLs, this will ensure that as much page strength as possible is retained, by being transferred from the old page to the new one via a 301 redirect. It will let Google know which old pages to replace (reindex) with the correct new page.
This will also reduce the number of 404 pages that are presented to your visitors as the search results (old URLs) will be redirected to the correct new pages.
As for your homepage, hopefully that hasn't changed (as in a new domain name). If it is indeed the same as before, you'll still get visitors finding that page correctly. Though with the site showing so many 404 pages and at present, old pages loosing strength as they cannot be found, your domain authority and homepage strength could start to reduce soon, thus reducing your rankings for your homepage.
If your domain name has changed, you'll need to inform Google of the change via GWMT.
If the above isn't done and done soon, your old pages will start to disappear from search engine indexes and you'll be starting from scratch with your new pages.
Hope that helps,
Regards
Simon
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
-
Google Penalty Investigation
Hi All, I've recently had a google penalty, and have spent a long while working through tying up any loose ends with my site (I'm building a new one, so you'll still see some probs on my current one). My search referrals do slowly seem to be recovering, but only for variations of terms that are similar to 'bike repair'. Now, my site does primarily offer bike repair advice, so that's a good thing, but I'm not yet ranking for any of my specific keywords. One example is that I used to rank quite high for the term 'schrader valve'. Is this a signal of anything in particular? Or can I not read anything specific into this? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | madegood0 -
Changing Web Hosting
We're about to change web hosting providers and I'm wondering whether there's an "optimal" way to do this without losing any SEO value. Is it as simple as changing hosts without SEO in mind - point the domain to the new host?
Technical SEO | | b40040400 -
Which factors are effect on Google index?
Mywebsite have 455 URL submitedbut only 77 URLs are indexed. How can i improve more indexed URL?
Technical SEO | | magician0 -
Does Google know what footer content is?
We plan to do away with fixed footer content and make, for the most part, the content in the traditional footer area unique just like the 'main' part of the content. This begs the question, do Google know what is footer content as opposed to main on page content?
Technical SEO | | NeilD0 -
How to correct a google canonical issue?
So when I initially launched my website I had an issue where I didn't properly set my canonical tags and all my pages got crawled. Now in looking at the search engine results I see a number of the pages that were meant to be canonical tagged to the correct page showing up in the results. What is the best way to correct this issue with google? Also I noticed that while initially I was ranking well for the main pages, now those results have disappeared entirely and deeper in the rankings I am finding the pages that were meant to be canonical tagged. Please Help.
Technical SEO | | jackaveli0 -
Home page deindexed by google
when I search my website on google by site:www.mydomain.com I have found my domain with www has been de-indexed by google, but when I search site:mydomain.com, my home page--**mydomain.com **show up on the search results without www, put it simple, google only index my domain without www, I wonder how to make my domain with www being indexed, and how to prevent this problem occure again.
Technical SEO | | semer0 -
Unexplained spikes in Google Analytics
My site has modest traffic (50 unique visitors per day). In the past week, I've seen two unexplained spikes in my Google Analytics. Yesterday, there were 140 unique visitors, and these unique visitors each visited one unique page. This appears to be a bot of some sort. If this is a bot, why does Google Analytics think these are unique visitors? Is there a was for small sites to deal with this? Best,
Technical SEO | | ChristopherGlaeser
Christopher0 -
Google & Separators
This is not a question but something to share. If you click on all of these links and compare the results you will see why _ is not a good thing to have in your URLs. http://www.google.com/search?q=blue http://www.google.com/search?q=b.l.u.e http://www.google.com/search?q=b-l-u-e http://www.google.com/search?q=b_l_u_e http://www.google.com/search?q=b%20l%20u%20e If you have any other examples of working separators please comment.
Technical SEO | | Dan-Petrovic3