What do I do with an old site when a new one is built?
-
I have a customer that has a PR 4 website with over 3000 pages of content. He decided to build a brand new website with a new domain and it now has a PR of 2. Our question is, what do we do with the old site? Do we migrate all the content over to the new site and do redirects on all the pages? Do we keep the old site up and put links over to the new site? He was just planning on shutting it down but that seemed like a complete waste of PR and SEO. What is his best course of action? Thanks for your replies.
-
You should also set up Google Webmaster Tools for your old and new domains and then tell Google about your change of address. Log-in then go to Configuration>Change of Address
And here is some other information from Google that is useful to follow https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=83105
-
I agree 100% with your answer, checking where most of your backlinks are coming from is very important and changing them to your new website shouldn't be a problem; as well as do look at the deep links and redirect them to the new website as well.
-
Move whatever content makes sense and do 301 redirects. If there's no reason for that content to be there and if it's not bringing in any traffic, or if it is, either wya, it makes complete sense to move/migrate content that's relevant and then do 301's. Make sure you check where most of your backlinks are coming from and if you can get any of those links changed to the new website. I would also check for deep links to the old site and make sure, whatever URL those deep links were going to, are redirected to the new page on the new site. I hope this helps.
-
Hi. I am not a developer, so I can't give you an in-depth answer except to say that you absolutely must implement 301 redirects from your old pages to new in order to maintain your link equity from the old site. If you need more information on how to do this, let me know and I can get the required info.
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
-
301 Domain Redirect And Old Domain to a New one including pages
Hi, I need to 301 an old domain to a new one (new website) I need to 301 the domain to a new page not the new domain direct for example www.olddomain.co.uk to www.newdomain.co.uk/pagenew Then I need to also 301 all the other pages on the old domain to the new one for example... www.oldmain.co.uk/oldpage to www.newdomain.co.uk/newpage Issue is I can do one or the other not both, I can get the other pages to redirect but then the main domain wont redirect to the correct new page. Or I can get the old domain to redirect but not the internal pages. Thanks
Technical SEO | | David-Sharpe0 -
Old Content Pages
Hello we run a large sports website. Since 2009 we have been doing game previews for most games every day for all the major sports..IE NFL, CFB, NBA, MLB etc.. Most of these previews generate traffic for 1-2 days leading up to or day of the event. After that there is minimal if any traffic and over the years almost nothing to the old previews. If you do a search for any of these each time the same matchup happens Google will update its rankings and filter out any old matchups/previews with new ones. So our question is what would you do with all this old content? Is it worth just keeping? Google Indexes a majority of it? Should we prune some of the old articles? The other option we thought of and its not really practical is to create event pages where we reuse a post each time the teams meet but if there was some sort of benefit we could do it.
Technical SEO | | dueces0 -
SEO across sites built using Google Web Toolkit
Hi guys, General question around general SEO best practices, such as url and title, and how they fit in with Google Web Toolkit built sites that use a www.site.com/#!category=12345 format. The space we're getting into is heavily competitive, with many established players doing standard SEO well. I know there are some speed benefits to using GWT, however I'd like to better understand the SEO impact, if any, before the site development progresses too far. Cheers, Jez
Technical SEO | | jez0000 -
One site per location or all under and umbrella site?
I am working on a project where we are re-branding lots (100+) existing local business under one national brand. I am wondering what we should do with their existing websites, they are generally fairly poor and will need re-designing to match the new brand but may have some residual links? 301 redirect the URL to the national site, e.g. nationalsite.com/localbusinessA? If so what should I look out for? Do I need to specifically redirect any pages that have links to them to the same pages on the new site? Or should I give them a new standalone website that they link back to the national brand site? More than likely this will be hosted on the same server and CMS as the main site just the URL will remain Do I need to make sure that any old URL's that had links to them are 301'd to the new pages? Many thanks for you advice.
Technical SEO | | BadgerToo0 -
301 redirect blog posts from old URL to new one
I moved a wordpress blog from domain.com to domain.com/blog . I want to redirect the links in google from the old domain.com to the new one, but I also want to put a new site/application at domain.com..so I'm thinking an .htaccess 301 redirect at the root wouldn't work. Any tips?
Technical SEO | | callmeed0 -
301 Redirect How Long until the juice passes through to new site
Hi Guys, Following on from a question i asked last week in regard to a 301 http://www.seomoz.org/q/301-redirect-have-no-ranking I was thinking that i had some kind of issue on the site, although i have gone over it with a fine tooth comb i cannot find any issue's and from the amount of reads the thread has had im sure if there was something obvious it would have been pointed out. So i am quite confident the 301 from site A to site B is fine and working as intended, so my question is how long should it take until the juice is passed From site A to Site B as its 9 weeks now and still down 85% on traffic and even text for my home page if copied into the search bar don't bring up my site Bing is fine and did not see any real traffic drops but Google is not giving me back the rankings i had prior Whenever i have done a 301 before the rankings pretty steady and i see no real loss in rankings but this time ... painful all changes in WMT made
Technical SEO | | kellymandingo
Canonical tag implemented
all Pages 301 and correct 200 response from the targeted page
Sitemap Updated
Many Links Changed from Old site to new (including DMOZ)
no Robots text Blocking directory's
Google crawling freely and regularly The strange thing is New content is indexed immediately and ranks easily, I added a page for my service in my local area and went straight to position 5 in Google however old existing content wont move, I tracked 150 keywords only 4 are top 75 Don't know what else to do so any advice would be much appreciated PS site is around 17k pages Paul0 -
Help optimising this site
Hi I have been optimising this site http://seakayakdevon.co.uk/ which is a wordpress site since making changes to it recently the site is now indexed and appearing among its competitors. trouble is they still are placed higher rn the SE rankings. i wish to optimise for local search i.e on Google places etc. but the trouble is there is'nt a physical address for the business it is run from various coastal locations. any ideas how i can still market for local search- maps etc. I have done the following optimisation: sitemaps title tag, description tag improved content removed duplicate content an blocker pages replace image text and replaced with header tag improved page names - making them static any advice of guidance would be greatly appreciated- will the fatc its built in wordpress limit its ability to gain better ranking in the SE? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Bristolweb0 -
Video submission sites
Hello, What are the top 5 sites for video submissions ? Any suggestions about which points should be taken into consideration when submitting videos ? Thanks
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050