How long will the 301 ranking swap-over take?
-
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
-
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
-
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!
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
-
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.
-
Hi Wissam,
The site is moving to a new domain but the content is identical.
Thanks for your reply.
Anthony
-
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
-
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.
-
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)
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
-
Core Web Vitals hit Mobile Rankings
Hey all, Ever since Google announced "Core Web Vitals" are mobile rankings have nose-dived. At first, I thought it was optimisation changes to the page titles we had made which might still be part of the issue. However, Desktop rankings actuallyy increased for the same pages where mobile decreased. There is the plan to introduce a new ranking signal into the Google algorithm called the "core web vitals: and this was discussed around late May. even though it's supposed to get fully indexed into a ranking signal later this year or early next; I think Google continuously test and release this items before any official release. If you weren't aware, there is a section in Google Webmaster Tools related to "core web visits", which looks at:1. Loading2. Interactivity3. Visual StabilityThis overlays some of the other basic requirements of a good website and mobile experience. Taking a look at our Google Search Console, it appears to be the following:1. Mobile- 1,006 poor URLs, 100URLs need improvement and 475 good URLs.2. desktop- 0 poor URLs, 379 need improvements and 1,200 good URLsSOURCE: https://search.google.com/search-console/core-web-vitals?resource_id=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.griffith.ie%2FIn the report, we can see two distinct issues with the mobile pages:CLS Issue: more than 0.25 (mobile)- 1,006 casesLCP issue: longer than 4secs (mobile) - 348 case_CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)This is a developer issue, and needs fixing. It's basically when a mobile screen jumps for the user. It is explained in this article: https://web.dev/cls/Seems to be an issue with all pages. **LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)_**Again, another developer fix that needs to be implemented. It's connected to page speed, and can be viewed here: https://web.dev/lcp/Looking at GCS, it looks like the blog content is mostly to blame.It's worth fixing these issues and again looking at the other items on page speed score tests:1. Leverage browser caching- https://gtmetrix.com/reports/griffith.ie/rBtvUC0F2. https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=griffith.ie- mobile score for home page is 16/100, https://www.griffith.ie/people/thamil-venthan-ananthavinayagan is 15/100I think here is the biggest indicator of the issue at hand. Has anybody else noticed their mobile rankings go down and desktop stay the same of increase.Kind regards,
Web Design | | robhough909
Rob0 -
Website Redesign & Ensuring Minimal Traffic/Rankings Lost
Hi there, We have undergone a website redesign (mycompany.com) and our site is ready to go live however the new website is built on a different platform so all of our blog pages will not be copied over - to avoid a large web developer expense. So our intention is to then leave all the blog pages as (on the old web design) but move it to the domain blog.mycompany.com with 301 redirects inserted on mycompany.com for each blog post pointing to the corresponding blog.mycompany.com. Is there anything else we should do to ensure minimal traffic/rankings are lost? Thank you so much for your help.
Web Design | | amitbroide0 -
Converting to WP - Should I add .html or 301?
Moving my site to WP and the old url structure pages end in ".html". I have seen there are plugins that allow you to add .html to the WP pages to preserve links. I am hosting on Synthesis and they do not support htaccess, although you can submit 301 re-directs through the help ticket system. My question is what is the best way to proceed? I have read that 301s "leak" some link juice, but I sure do like those pretty urls. Advice appreciated!
Web Design | | Chris6611 -
Website Updates, will this affect my ranking/ DA or PA?
Hello All! My website is due for a big update soon, my current site is doing ok, however I want to update all of the content, structure, style and look of my whole site. I feel that with the way it's been going lately that it's time for an upgrade, my question is, will this affect my ranking? Will my page ranking's be affected? Will my DA be affected? I intend to optimize this new website perfectly too with all the things I've learnt since joining this forum. All the best, Paul
Web Design | | Paul_Tovey0 -
Is it common to have some of error/warning(currency duplicate,redirect, etc...) in most website that rank well?
Hi could any body could give me some idea on 'on page optimisation' Currently in my campaign I have around 3000+ errors, 14,000+ warning, 7000+ notices for the following reasons: Overly-Dynamic URL
Web Design | | LauraHT
Temporary Redirect
Title Element Too Long (> 70 Characters)
Duplicate Page Title
etc... First of all I know these have negative effect on SEO. Now to fix towards those issues it involve lots of works and times. At the same time most of our important keywords/url rank position have not changed over the last 12 months. Does that mean the above has only limited negative effect? I just want to know is it worthy to invest the man/hour/money to clean those issues. As it involves decent development time. Is it common to have some of error/warning in most website that rank well? (e.g. I 've seem may big website have duplicate title/meta-desc on their currency variant page)0 -
Will launching this site get my E-commerce site penalized?
Hello.. I am wondering if you guys think launching a site like this is a good or a bad idea. All of the links on it go directly to the exact corresponding page on the ecommerce site. Do you think Google will penalize my site for launching sites (i have many other domains that i will be setting up similar to this) like this? Thanks...
Web Design | | Prime850 -
Home page is not the highest ranking page?
Our websites do not have the home page as the first page in the search engines. It's something benign like the privacy policy page or the directions page! I've thought of adding no index to the privacy page, but then the directions or contact page would show up instead of the home page. One odd thing I've noticed, is that on our link to the home page on our menu and footer, the link is /default.aspx?mb=rte. But that shouldn't make a difference and default.aspx should rank first, right? What can we do to fix this?
Web Design | | CFSSEO0 -
Development site accidentally crawled - Will this cause problems?
We are currently developing a new version of our website and to make it easy to access for all team members, we just set it up on a server accessible via a publicly accessible domain name (ie devsite.com). There has been no SEO and no links created to this site, or so I thought. Recently, I found out that Google somehow found its way to this development site and has been indexing the pages! I was a little alarmed, as there are no links to the domain and we'll soon be transitioning all the content over to our primary production domain. I immediately created a robots.txt file to disallow access to the entire development domain. My fear is that there may be some duplicate content penalty if Google sees that the content that is on our new site (once it goes live and is pushed to our REAL domain name) was previously indexed on our test domain. We're slated to launch in 2-3 weeks. Is there anything else I should do? Should I even be worried? I'm probably a bit paranoid, but given the amount of time and effort that has gone into this new site, I love any advice or thoughts. Thank You!
Web Design | | AndrewY0