New website from scratch and redirects or maintaining domain?
-
Hi friends,
I have to face a big challenge. My client has an online store with about 250 products. The store is based on a web service provider whose CMS gives critical duplicate content issues. My client is considering to rethink the store from scratch and choose a CMS that offers more guarantees. I have two options:
- Starting the store from scratch with new domain and make redirects (whole domain or page to page?)
- Maintaining the domain, careful to keep the current structure of the URL, which is currently pretty bad
I hope you could help me. Thanks in advance.
-
First thing I would look at when considering the changes your are is how well is the current website doing in the SERPs - does it get much search engine traffic? Is the domain name itself important to the business?
I would look at keeping the domain and look at either addressing the current duplicate content issue with canonicalization or changing your CMS and pointing the old urls to new corresponding ones using 301 redirects. I have done this successfully in the past when changing the URL structure of a site and I didn't have a negative impact on search traffic, in fact quite the opposite. That way you are passing on most of the value gained by any links to the old URLS and then you can concentrate on the new CMS and all of its benefits including implementing a new user friendly structure, without having to worry about the old structure and following it..
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
-
If my website uses CDN does thousands of 301 redirect can harm the website performance?
Hi, If my website uses CDN does thousands of 301 redirect can harm the website performance? Thanks Roy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kadut1 -
Going from 302 redirect to 301 redirect weeks after changing URL structure
I made a small change on an ecommerce site that had big impacts I didn't consider... About six weeks ago in an effort to clean up one of many SEO-related problems on an ecommerce site, I had a developer rewrite the URLs to replace underscores with hyphens and redirect all pages throughout the site to that page with the new URL structure. We didn't immediately update our sitemap to reflect the changes (bad!) and I just discovered all the redirects are 302s... Since these changes, most of the pages have a page authority of 1 and we have dropped several spots in organic search. If we were to setup 301 redirects for the pages that we changed the URL structure would there be any changes in organic search placement and page authority or is it too late?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nobody16116990439410 -
Moving Entire Domain to New Site with New File Extensions
I have been looking for a while for a good an clear Step by Step guide for moving a site from an old to a new domain... so I guess a good discussion here, could help many web masters have a smooth transition. So in your opinion, beside the obvious, what are the most important steps you must take? Here is what I do: 1. 301 old site to new one and TEST.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dhidalgo1
2. Check Internal Links - Double Check for 404's.
3. Update your Social Profiles with new URL.
4. Let GWT and BWT of the change and request a Crawl.
5. Contact as Many of Webmaster as you possibly can to point your links to your new domain. What's missing? What have you found helpful and/or Effective?0 -
Should I start new domain and redirect site?
I recently my rankings for http://www.top-10-dating-reviews.com (some adult content) drop off a cliff. Google tells me there's no manual penalty therefore it might be algorithmic. I don't know why my rankings went but I think it could be that I added A LOT of category pages pulling the same content from posts and this could have caused both duplicate content issues and too many on page links causing an algo penalty. Ive deleted the categories and therefore fixed duplicate content issue (perhaps you guys could check out the site and see that you agree with me) but rankings have not improved even thougo most of the pages have been recrawled. I read somewhere its extremely hard to recover from such a penalty so should I move my site to a and domain and redirect all urls? I can't think of another solution. Any help appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
Redirect non www. domain to WWW. domain for established website?
Hey guys, The website in question has been online for more than 5 years but there are still 2 versions of the website. Both versions are indexed by Google and of course, this will result in duplicate content. Is it necessary to redirect the non-www domain to the www. domain. What are the cons and advantages? Will a lot of organic traffic be lost at first (if non-www are getting a good amount of traffic)? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BruLee0 -
Need Reviews on my new website
Hi, I recently developed this website: http://goo.gl/fl5a5 And started link building to that website and getting some very good links so far. So far ok, but i would request some experienced guys here to post some reviews and help me with your suggestions so that i can rank better. Its been a month since i started link building to this site. . PS: I have cloned my competitors site with unique content. Will this becomes an issue? You can check my competitors site by Google'in my site entire title. Please let me know your thoughts on this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vegit0 -
Seeking Help with Domain Acquisition Redirect Strategy
My company is purchasing www.boughtsite.com. This new site has multiple sub-domain sites: customsite1.boughtsite.com, customsite2.boughtsite.com, etc. 1. Is it possible to redirect everything from www.boughtsite.com to www.mycompanysite.com while leaving the other sub-domain sites active? These other sites have different audiences than our main site. 2. Would it be an okay solution to just place a link on boughtsite.com to mycompanysite.com telling visitors "We have been re-branded to My Company" 3. Can I use an i-frame to move customsite1.boughtsite.com to www.mycompanysite.com/customsite1 instead? Thanks for your input!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pbhatt0 -
Should we move to a new domain??
Working with a company that is considering moving to a new domain and wanted some advice.They have 2 domains (they own both) and one is a shorter version of the other. The current domain is over 10 years old and has a domain authority score of 80. It is 9 characters long. The new domain (which they also own) has a DA score of 43 and is only 3 characters long. The debate is as much about branding as anything but there is a concern on how it will affect search. I was hoping for so advice and any pitfalls others may have experienced. Thanks!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 2comarketing0