How long will the 301 ranking swap-over take?

[Grenadi]

Hi all,

I'm about to hit the crunch button and finalise the 301 setup for our website to redirect all traffic, and our old very nice ranking, to our new website. My only question is, how long will the ranking take to move to the new site?

Once the 301 is in place what happens when someone searches my keywords? Currently when you search our preferred keywords we rank 1 and 2 depending on the wording. Once I've made the 301 happen, will you see the old site in Google rankings until they re-index it or will it swap straight away to the new site with its continued high rank (from the link juice) or will I have a blackspot period where I don't rank at all? I cannot afford to have a period of time, at this time of year, that I don't rank 1 or 2 - if this is even a vague possibility I might have to consider postponing my 301 till a less important time of year.

Thanks for your help,

Anthony

[Grenadi]

Hey,

I had immense trouble with GWT because it wouldn't accept my domain name (.vic.edu.au) and kept coming up with the error 'not a root level domain) even though it was the correct domain. I checked with their bug tracker and several people with obscure domain names had the same problem. It will let me submit the site and use most GWT tools but not the change of address tool and a couple of others - any thoughts on how to make GWT re-index my site faster anyway?

Thanks,

Anthony

[NewGlobalVentures.comSEOTexas]

I have to agree with Todd here. After you've made the switch be sure to login to GWT to make sure that they know about it.

It wouldn't hurt either to submit the new URL to the SE's as well!

Cheers!

[wissamdandan]

My Past experience finds that rel canonical will transfer faster. than a 301

put two sites online.

Site A add rel canonical from page to page, this will help you in the transition faster.

[toddmumford]

Using the Google webmaster tools site change of address helps. Find it in the GWT Site configuration > change of address area.

Used with 301 redirection, the change usually takes place in about 2-3 weeks, depending on the authority of the domain.

[Grenadi]

Thanks EGOL,

Know any tools that I could use to do a direct analysis of the sites' ranking / SEO status immediately before and immediately after the 301 has taken place? I know that SEOmoz toolset is good for this but it only crawls every week (or whatever) - I would like to see the differences between the two domains immediately if possible as soon as the DNS change has taken affect (so within 24 hours probably).

Thanks,

Anthony

[EGOL]

Just saying what I would do here... not giving advice...

I would do the 301.  In my experience the homepage usually 301s quickly and correctly.  Its the interior pages that might lag.  (You said that the homepage is really the only important page for this site.)

If  you don't want to take a chance then take the new site down to avoid dupe content and put it back up after your important ranking season is over - then do the 301.

[Grenadi]

Hi Wissam,

The site is moving to a new domain but the content is identical.

Thanks for your reply.

Anthony

[Grenadi]

Hi EGOL.

Thanks for your reply.

In regards to this particular situation the old site has a pagerank of 5 also and the new domain obviously 1 as it is new.

I really only need the front page of the site to keep its rank.

One big problem that I could have is that I have setup everything ready for the 301 (I only need to change the DNS on the old site to point to the new server) - so i now have 2 websites running with exact duplicate content (they're identical apart from domain name).  I cannot now take the new site offline as it is being used extensively - so I need the old site for its rank and the new site for its function - which is worse - possibly dropping rank for a few weeks between Google crawls or having duplicate content for several weeks till we can do the 301?

I suppose I could 301 the new domain to the old domain, leave it for a couple of months until the important ranking season is over then swap and 301 the old domain to the new domain... or would that be too confusing for Google and SEO rankings?

Lastly a bit more technical info that might help:

There is actually two old sites both identical (mirrored because they thought it would be good for SEO not knowing about duplicate content problems). The two old sites are both .com.au sites. The new domain which I want to 301 both sites too is a .vic.edu.au site which is an obscure domain name related to the education department in Victoria, Australia - I have been told that government and education domain names tend to have better chances with SEO, but I wonder if such an obscure domain extension might hurt my chances?

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Anthony

[EGOL]

The more powerful your site the faster things happen, so it is not possible to give you an exact amount of time.

In the past 18 months I have 301ed two sites and two subdomains.   These were all PR5 and within 48 hours some of the new URLs of the most important pages began replacing the old URLs in their exact position in the SERPs.  Some of the less important pages and PDF documents required several days to switch.

A couple folders of pages had some difficulty and were in and out of the SERPs for a couple weeks.  These were retail pages and we lost some sales.

Within 30 days everything was back to normal.  The websites that were 301ed performed as usual but the subdomains that were redirected to a folder in the root had large ranking gains.

[wissamdandan]

Hi Anthony,

Are we talking 2 different domain names?

are the content from site a to site b are the same ?

Usually crawlers when they come to your website and notice the 301 they will keep visiting your site and they will swap the urls.

If you are moving to a different domain, you might see some drop in rankings due to the new domain low authority and it takes time for the main authority to move from one domain to another.

the higher the authority of site A the higher this will be a faster transition with out any interruption in rankings..

so in a summary if you are moving from a domain to a new domain, or the new site have some changes in content, i would wait till after the holidays(if you benefit from the holidays)