Domain migration strategy
-
Imagine you have a large site on an aged and authoritative domain.
For commercial reasons the site has to be moved to a new domain, and in the process is going to be revamped significantly. Not an ideal starting scenario obviously to be biting off so much all at once, but unavoidable.
The plan is to run the new site in beta for about 4 weeks, giving users the opportunity to play with it and provide feedback. After that there will be a hard cut over with all URLs permanently redirected to the new domain.
The hard cut over is necessary due to business continuity reasons, and real complexity in trying to maintain complex UI and client reporting over multiple domains. Of course we'll endeavour to mitigate the impact of the change by telling G about the change in WMC and ensuring we monitor crawl errors etc etc.
My question is whether we should allow the new site to be indexed during the beta period?
My gut feeling is yes for the following reasons:
-
It's only 4 weeks and until such time as we start redirecting the old site the new domain won't have much whuffie so there's next to no chance the site will ranking for anything much.
-
Give Googlebot a headstart on indexing a lot of URLs so they won't all be new when we cut over the redirects
Is that sound reasoning? Is the duplication during that 4 week beta period likely to have some negative impact that I am underestimating?
-
-
I wouldn't sweat it. We left up www.bulwarkpest.com for several months while moving to www.bulwarkpestcontrol.com .... I know that there is some risk in it. But I think Google is pretty understanding of site migrations. Of course I am just a small pest control guy so they may not have ever noticed. Sooo.. take that with a grain of salt.
It's does make it easier to have the other site live so that you can redirect on a per page base and know that it's working. I would rather make sure the redirects are correct and working prior to moving the entire site over. But be warned.. site redirects may not always give you the same authority... research the online Yellow Pages.
-
My opinion of risk goes up much higher if this is a directory vs a site with original content articles.
-
Hi Aran, thanks for your response.
My thinking has also evolved a bit and I'm now thinking we ought to exclude the new site until we're ready to cut over as @EGOL suggested.
The critical info I didn't mention before was that there is important client ROI and reporting reasons that we need to ensure that the current site continues to perform right up until the cut over, at which point the 301s will be implemented. The cross domain canonical would address the dupliaction, but would also start to depreciate the current pages prematurely.
The thing that I was underestimating before was the negative impression that the new domain would give Google when it suddenly appeared with 1M+ pages of duplicate content plus no real link profile of its own (until we implement the 301s)...all the hallmarks of a scraper.
Better I think to avoid this by excluding the beta until we cut over, and make sure we prep well for that.
-
Agreed, though Charles could use canonical tags to tell Google that the new pages are authoritative. This may take a while to be indexed, but should prevent any detrimental effects with duplicate content.
-
Thanks very much for your thoughts. The root of my uncertainty is indeed the way Google in particular is viewing duplciated content today.
What if I told you that the site was a business directory and that the new site would be a big improvement in terms of on page optimization? By which I mean new/different (and much better) page titles and improved internal linking. I mention this only because the new site won't a direct replicar of the old one. Make a difference?
-
I have no factual data on this... just going with my gut....
Based upon how Google is acting these days I would not take chances with having two copies of the same site in the SERPs for an entire month. I would not want to see any pages on the new site filtered for being duplicates.
Most people don't get a new site indexed and those redirected domains normally go fairly well. So, I would be pleased with that and not take chances.
Safety might be better than going for some unknown gain.
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
-
Does redirecting from a "bad" domain "infect" the new domain?
Hi all, So a complicated question that requires a little background. I bought unseenjapan.com to serve as a legitimate news site about a year ago. Social media and content growth has been good. Unfortunately, one thing I didn't realize when I bought this domain was that it used to be a porn site. I've managed to muck out some of the damage already - primarily, I got major vendors like Macafee and OpenDNS to remove the "porn" categorization, which has unblocked the site at most schools & locations w/ public wifi. The sticky bit, however, is Google. Google has the domain filtered under SafeSearch, which means we're losing - and will continue to lose - a ton of organic traffic. I'm trying to figure out how to deal with this, and appeal the decision. Unfortunately, Google's Reconsideration Request form currently doesn't work unless your site has an existing manual action against it (mine does not). I've also heard such requests, even if I did figure out how to make them, often just get ignored for months on end. Now, I have a back up plan. I've registered unseen-japan.com, and I could just move my domain over to the new domain if I can't get this issue resolved. It would allow me to be on a domain with a clean history while not having to change my brand. But if I do that, and I set up 301 redirects from the former domain, will it simply cause the new domain to be perceived as an "adult" domain by Google? I.e., will the former URL's bad reputation carry over to the new one? I haven't made a decision one way or the other yet, so any insights are appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gaiaslastlaugh0 -
Why some domains and sub-domains have same DA, but some others don't?
Hi I noticed for some blog providers in my country, which provide a sub-domian address for their blogs. the sub-domain authority is exactly as the main domain. Whereas, for some other blog providers every subdomain has its different and lower authority. for example "ffff.blog.ir" and "blog.ir" both have domain authority of 60. It noteworthy to mention that the "ffff.blog.ir" does not even exist! This is while mihanblog.com and hfilm.mihanblog.com has diffrent page authority.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rayatarh5451230 -
Nice Domain Authority but Not Ranking
Hi, A client of mine who owns a website reached out to me. He got penalized a while ago and has long since recovered (not sure exactly, but for sure a year). His domain authority is in the upper 30s but is still not ranking for many of his keywords that he ranked on the first page. I am not so familiar with the technical aspects of penalties and such, but is this a common scenario? Why is his domain authority great but his ranking downright awful? Does he have a chance if he builds great links, or is something else wrong that we can't figure out?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rachel_J0 -
Redirect ot new domain
Hello, Can someone give me advice on this specific situation: For now we have a website www.website.com/ Because of some specific business situation we want to move to .ca version but also we want to keep website.com - for U.S customers. Here's how I imagined to do this: 301 Redirect from www.website.com to website.ca. Because at this time website.com redirects to www.website.com I would remove the redirect and just keep it like website.com (so this will be new domain). Is this is the right solution? Regards, Nenad
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Uniline0 -
Consolidating two separate domains and redirecting towards a new replatformed domain
A client has two different sites selling the same products with the same content, they would like to replatform onto Magento while redirecting those 2 sites to the new URL. The question is, besides monitoring the 301 redirects is there anything else to take into consideration when consolidating two sites into one new site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RocketWeb0 -
Redirection strategy for mobile site
Hello folks! I am just about to launch a mobile specific version of our website. We were not able to make the main site responsive so have decided to make a seperate copy on an m dot subdomain. I have kept the url structure identical between both sites and added a canonical url on the mobile pages pointing to the desktop site. I will detect and redirect all mobile devices and googlebot mobile crawler to the m dot site. The questions i have are as follows... Is that the best approach if you use a mobile specific site on a seperate subdomain? What type of redirects should i use to send mobile users (and googlebot mobile) to the mobile site? My mobile site does not have all the pages the desktop site has. What happens if i redirect a mobile user from a page on the desktop site to a page on the mobile site that does not exist? (will give 404 currently). I guess i could maintain a list of valid mobile urls but this would be a pain (and a bit of an overhead) Your help is most appreciated Regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobertHill0 -
Hyphen domain effect SEO?
Hi Guys, I am looking to buy some domain that have the keyword I want in - but my question is; Does using hypehns in a domain effect your SEO? Thanks Gareth
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GAZ090 -
Exact match domain or root domain for speedy SEO?
I am doing SEO for a website that has constantly rotating and only temporarily pertinent subjects on it. Let's say these information and subject cycles go for about 6 months. Assuming this would it be more effective to optimize exact match domains for each 6 month cycle or make a main domain with a few of the keywords and just target a page for each roaming subject? Advantage of the subject is I get domain authority to feed off of, advantage of the exact match is, of course exact match domains are a powerful tool to rank highly and it is only a medium competitive market, usually about 40 domain and page authority. What do you guys think? Do you have any techniques to dominate temporary and rotating markets?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarloSchneider0