Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Server Migration, Does it effect SEO?
-
About to go through a server migration. My intitial thought is that a change in servers shouldn't really change my rankings. But I've heard rumors...
Can a server migration change rankings? Why?
-
No language change on the servers. I know I shouldn't be worried but hey, it's my baby. All grown up and going off to a college of her own now...
The upgrade should help with site speed so I am hoping that I might get a boost.
-
Good to know that the SEO isn't harmed if there are no errors... I can see how a site missing the htaccess could be damaging. Ouch.
-
As long as the site and URL structure remain unchanged, then a server migration shouldn't make any impact in the rankings.
That being said, there are a few relatively uncommon things that could potentially cause some issues -
1. If you are going to be moving from a PHP server to an IIS server and you need to change your URLs to .asp or something like that, then you make take a temporary hit while the search engines crawl and index the new versions.
2. If the new server is slower or is prone to frequent downtime, then yes, it could negatively affect your rankings.
3. If you are moving to a new shared server, make sure the rest of the sites on that server are all legitimate sites that haven't been blacklisted by the search engines for any reason. For example, if you move your site to a server that has 100 Russian sites or Nigerian spammer sites all on the same IP, then it's possible your site could be negatively impacted.
Again, these are all relatively uncommon scenarios as long as you are simply moving your site over to another server while keeping everything else the same, so you shouldn't notice any difference in your rankings.
-
Unless the layout was changed or things went wrong, no. I've migrated maybe 50 websites over the past year with no ill effects. Any that did, occurred because something went wrong (htaccess issues, extended downtime) or because there was a design change. In the case of the latter, rankings return any time between a few days to a few weeks. (Assuming the markup/content is still good)
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
-
WordPress Sub-directory for SEO
Hi There, I'm working on a WordPress site that includes a premium content blog with approx 900 posts. As part of the project, those 900 posts and other membership functionality will be moved from the main site to another site built specifically for content/membership. Ideally, we want the existing posts to remain on the root domain to avoid a loss in link juice/domain authority. We initially began setting up a WordPress Multisite using the sub-directory option. This allows for the main site to be at www.website.com and the secondary site to be at www.website.com/secondary. Unfortunately, the themes and plugins we need for the platform do not play nicely with WordPress Multisite, so we started seeking a new solution, and, discovered that a second instance of WordPress can be installed in a subdirectory on the server. This would give us the same subdirectory structure while bypassing WordPress Multisite and instead, having two separate single-site installs. Do you foresee any issues with this WordPress subdirectory install? Does Google care/know these are two separate WordPress installs and do we risk losing any link juice/domain authority?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HimalayanInstitute0 -
AJAX requests and implication for SEO
Hi, I got a question in regard to webpages being served via AJAX request as I couldn't find a definitive answer in regard to an issue we currently face: When visitors on our site select a facet on a Listing Page, the site doesn't fully reload. As a consequence only certain tags of the content (H1, description,..) are updated, while other tags like canonical URLs, meta noindex,nofollow tag, or the title tag are not updating as long as you don't refresh the page. We have no information about how this will be crawled and indexed yet but I was wondering if anyone of you knows, how this will impact SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FashionLux0 -
Should I migrate .co.uk to .com?
I have previously searched the forum and could not find a definitive answer on this subject so would appreciate any guidance. I have just joined a new company, we have a .co.uk site which gets lots of traffic. We have a .com site which is targeting USA and .com/de/ targeting Germany. 'hreflang' is configured on the .com (between the USA and German sites) but not on .co.uk. This means that in the eyes of search engines (and Moz Pro) the 2 domains are competitors (and the .co.uk has much more presence than the .com in the USA). I know how to fix this and I am in the process of doing so. My question is whether it would make sense to migrate the .co.uk site to .com As previously mentioned the .co.uk site already does very well both in the UK and around the world (as our product is well known in our niche). As .co.uk can only primarily be targeted to UK would our global reach increase enough to justify migrating it to .com? We have dealers/distributors in maybe 30 countries and are continuing to expand, we will at point point add additional languages so my suggestion is that we migrate now as the authority of the .co.uk will help the emerging markets as well as increase our visibility in markets that are not currently primary targets. We are also in the process of hiring new staff specifically to focus on Content Marketing. So again this suggests having the 1 domain will make sense in the long run (as any value gained from content marketing success will be seen by all country/language focussed sites). I am also planning to rebuild the sites in the next few months as the current ones are not fit for purpose so the migration would coincide with this (I know this is not ideal). Apologies for the lengthy question, I hope the additional background information will help in providing some feedback to help me make the decision. David
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JamesCrossland0 -
Dealing with 404s during site migration
Hi everyone - What is the best way to deal with 404s on an old site when you're migrating to a new website? Thanks, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
How does the use of Dynamic meta tags effect SEO?
I'm evaluating a new client site which was built buy another design firm. My question is they are dynamically creating meta tags and I'm concerned that it is hurting their SEO. When I view the page source this is what I see. <meta name="<a class="attribute-value">keywords</a>" id="<a class="attribute-value">keywordsGoHere</a>" content="" /> <meta name="<a class="attribute-value">description</a>" id="<a class="attribute-value">descriptionGoesHere</a>" content="" /> <title id="<a class="attribute-value">titleGoesHere</a>">title> To me it looks like the tags are not being added to the page, however the title is showing when you view it in a browser and if use a spider view tool, it sees the title. I'm guess it is being called from a DB. So I'm a little concerned though that the search engines are not really seeing the title and description. I'm not worried about the keywords tag. Can anyone shed some light on how this might work? Why it might not being showing the text for the description in the page code and if that will hurt SEO? Thanks for the help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BbeS0 -
Is there any negative SEO effect of having comma's in URL's?
Hello, I have a client who has a large ecommerce website. Some category names have been created with comma's in - which has meant that their software has automatically generated URL's with comma's in for every page that comes beneath the category in the site hierarchy. eg. 1 : http://shop.deliaonline.com/store/music,-dvd-and-games/dvds-and-blu_rays/ eg. 2 : http://shop.deliaonline.com/store/music,-dvd-and-games/dvds-and-blu_rays/action-and-adventure/ etc... I know that URL's with comma's in look a bit ugly! But is there 'any' SEO reason why URL's with comma's in are any less effective? Kind Regs, RB
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RichBestSEO0 -
Does capitalization matter for SEO?
Two places capitalization comes into play: (1) on-page use (title, h1, body text, img alt text, etc) (2) external anchor text I didn't think it mattered from Google's point of view for on-page usage (is this correct?) but I notice that OpenSiteExplorer' s 'anchor text distribution' tab shows different counts for the same keyword if it's capitalized in different ways (eg seomoz.org is listed separate from SEOmoz.org). Is that just OSE or does Google treat the keyword/phrase different based on its capitalization, too? And if so, then should I be creating external links to my site with the 'regular' and 'Capitalized' versions of my key phrases?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | scanlin1 -
Recovery during domain migration
On average, how long does it takes to recover 80% of the rankings if two high authority domains are combined without chaging any content? I totally understand that each domain is different and search engines can treat them differently but if all the steps are followed to the T what are the chances?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ninjamarketer1