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
-
Why is pagination SEO such a mystery in 2021?
Hi folks. I would like to discuss pagination. I use WordPress (Genesis, specifically). I ran my site through a site scan and it flagged an error which told me that my blog was producing duplicate meta descriptions because the blog is paginated - the same meta description from the blog page is being used on Page 2, Page 3 etc. I looked into this and the Internet is awash with many other people scratching around for a solution. My understanding is that using a canonical link on the first page is not a good idea, because it says to Google that only Page 1 of the blog is important. I also read an article that states Google no longer reads the Rel=Prev/Next code that could be used to tell Google to ignore the issue. So, what's the solution? Do I even need one? As a side-thought, it seems to me that pagination is, well, pretty useless. I mean, if my blog has 20 pages and I've worked hard to create content, who is going to click through to anywhere near page 20? Nobody. There has to be a smarter way for people on-site to access content. I would love your thoughts on all of this. Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nobody16165422281340 -
Site Migration - Pagination
Hi, We are migrating our website and an issue we are facing is how to handle paginated content in our categories. Our new website will have the same structure but with different urls. Should we 301 redirect all the paginated content (if crawled by Google) to the url of the main category? To put this into an example: Old urls: www.example.com/technology/tvs (main category of TVs & also page 1) ** www.example.com/technology/tvs?v=0&page=2 ** ( page 2 of TVs) New urls: **www.example.com/soundvision/tvs **(main category of TVs & also page 1) **www.example.com/soundvision/tvs?page=2 **(page 2 of tvs) Should we redirect all of the old TV urls (also the paginated) to www.example.com/soundvision/tvs ? The is no rel next, prev tag in our site and no canonicals. Also there is a view all products page in each category, BUT it doesn't contain all the products(max. is 100 per page - yes the view all page is also paginated). The same view all products page (paginated) will exist in the new website also. I checked google search console, and Google has decided to treat as canonical page the first page www.example.com/technology/tvs . Also, all the organic traffic of our categories goes to these pages (main category page - 1st page). I would appreciate any thoughts on this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HellasSITES0 -
SEO for multiple languages [Arabic]
Hello all, I am currently managing a Marketplace that comes in two different languages: English & Arabic. The English website is, fortunately, doing quite well in terms of SEO performances but, not the Arabic one. The website has two kinds of content: Static content: controlled by me. It includes menu items, navigation, static pages etc which is properly translated among the two languages User-uploaded content: It includes ads/news posted by the user which may not be translated to Arabic if they chose not to do it. Now if somebody goes to the Arabic website and check a news item that doesn't have an Arabic translation, it will show the English title. I am assuming, serving content in a different language that is specified in the hreflang is a straight no, right?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MozammilStorat0 -
CDN for SEO (or not)?
Does CDN impact on SEO or not? There seems conflicting ideas as to whether they impact positively or negatively, I realise that if the page loads quicker this is a good thing for SEO and usability of course. Does Google see CDN as just cheating and a get-around for not doing the work from the ground up and using good hosting etc? Do you have any direct experience? All constructive input much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman101 -
Is tabbed content bad for SEO?
I work for a Theater show listings and ticketing website. In our show listings pages (e.g. http://www.theatermania.com/broadway/this-is-our-youth_302998/) we split our content into separate tabs (overview, pricing and show dates, cast, and video). Are we shooting ourselves in the foot by separating the content? Are we better served with keeping it all in a single page? Thanks so much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheaterMania0 -
Effects of having both http and https on my website
You are able to view our website as either http and https on all pages. For example: You can type "http://mywebsite.com/index.html" and the site will remain as http: as you navigate the site. You can also type "https://mywebsite.com/index.html" and the site will remain as https: as you navigate the site. My question is....if you can view the entire site using either http or https, is this being seen as duplicate content/pages? Does the same hold true with "www.mywebsite.com" and "mywebsite.com"? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rexjoec1 -
URL Shorteners. Are they SEO Friendly?
Do URL shortener services like bit.ly act as 301 redirects? I was thinking about utilizing one for longer query based URLs and didn't want to risk losing link juice. Thanks for the insight! Regards - Kyle
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kchandler0 -
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