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.
Would it be better to Start Over vs doing a Website Migration?
-
Hey guys /gals
I have a question please. I have a computer repair business that does extremely well in search and is on the front page of google for anything computer repair related.
However, I am currently re-branding my company and have completely redesigned every aspect of the UI and the SEO Site structure as well as the fact that I have completely written vastly different content and different title tag lines and meta descriptions for each page.
So basically when doing a migration we know that we want to keep our content, titles, headlines and meta descriptions the same as to not lose our page rank.
Seeing that I have completely went against the grain in all directions on a much needed company re-branding and everything is completely different from the old site is it even worthwhile 301 redirecting my old urls to the new ones that would (best) correspond with the new?
In the plainest English, would I do better at Ranking the New Website QUICKER without doing 301 redirects from the OLD to the NEW?
In an EXTREME instance like what I have done, would the Domain Migration IMPEDED me ranking the new site seeing how nothing is the same?
I have build a Rock solid SILO Site Architecture on the New site which is WordPress using the Thesis Framework and the old domain is built on JOOMLA 1.5
Thank fellas
Marshall
-
Hey thanks Keri and how are you?
-
Moz has recently had a little bit of experience with a rebrand, changing domains, changing URLs, implementing redirects, and a variety of other fun things to keep us busy. Ruth Burr, our in-house SEO, is giving a Mozinar that talks in-depth about this migration on Thursday, with a chance for you to ask questions at the end. If you're not able to attend the webinar, we'll have it online for download within two days.
You can reserve your spot at http://moz.com/webinars, as well as see all the past webinars we've done, and what else is scheduled in the future.
-
Hi Marshall,
one resource I think is very valuable regardless of if someone is new or have been doing it for long time this is a great search engine optimization is this guide please do not think that I am giving you this because I think you are a beginner I know you are not. And I agree with you Google has made things kind of nuts in the last 3 to 5 years.
http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo
It is definitely the right place to start if you are just picking up after a couple years off.
Sincerely,
Thomas
-
Thanks gents and figured as much.
I had to ask though. Although I am very good at SEO and coding and everything else, that means moot if you are not current with the recent GOOGLE drama that has been punishing everyone for the last 2 years now.
3-5 years ago, I could build a site and rank it on the first page for pretty much everything without even doing any back link building but...once again.. we are talking 5 years ago when things were a lot different and a lot less harder too.
Never hurts to ask the folks that do this stuff for their primary source of income know what I mean fellas?
Thanks once again to all of you for your responses to my question.
Sincerely,
Marshall : )
-
Just like the 2 suggestions, it's really best to keep both sites. Move forward with the new site and re-brand your company but don't scrap the original website. Add a banner, write up, some news explaining the re-brand and point the original site to the new site. You'll create a backlink and if the person is genuinely interested in what you have to offer, they'll follow to the new website.
301 any page that are relevant from the original site to the new site. If both sites have a products page then you can point it over. Google will naturally figure out what you did and start passing any relevant benefits to the new site.
-
Hi Marshall,
You're rebuilding your current website in WordPress using thesis framework. And you're asking basically if you you should do 301 redirects or not?
Absolutely you should do 301 redirects if you want to keep any part of your rank which sounds like it is doing pretty good. I would feel when redirect every page to the new page that has taken it's place. Also for word press I would strongly recommend using manage WordPress hosting
WP engine, zippykid, web synthesis, and Pagely are excellent choices.
I hope I've been of help,
Thomas
-
Please...dear God don't scrap your website (especially if you are ranking well for it). Even if the content is completely different, figure out where to redirect your legacy pages to and use 301 redirects. Just make sure that you are doing one to one redirects to maintain as much of your link equity as possible. Sorry for such a short and simple response to your long question, but this only required a simple answer. If you are offering the same products or services create a massive .htaccess file and redirect the hell out of your old site.
You owe me a Coke.
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
-
Staging website got indexed by google
Our staging website got indexed by google and now MOZ is showing all inbound links from staging site, how should i remove those links and make it no index. Note- we already added Meta NOINDEX in head tag
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Asmi-Ta0 -
Check website update frequency?
Is the tools out there that can check our frequently website is updated with new content products? I'm trying to do an SEO analysis between two websites. Thanks in advance Richard
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
How to rank my website in Google UK?
Hi guys, I own a London based rubbish removal company, but don't have enough jobs. I know for sure that some of my competitors get most of their jobs trough Google searches. I also have a website, but don't receive calls from it at all. Can you please tell me how to rank my website on keywords like: "rubbish removal london", "waste clearance london", "junk collection london" and other similar keywords? I know that for person like me (without much experience in online marketing) will be difficult task to optimize the website, but at least - I need some advices from where to start. I'm also thinking to hire an SEO but not sure where to find a trusted company. Most importantly I have no idea how much should pay to expect good results? What is too much and what is too low? I will appreciate all advices.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gorubbishgo0 -
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 -
Website completely delisted - reasons?
Hi, I got a request from a potential client as he do not understand why his website cannot be found on Google. I've checked that and found out that the complete website is not listed (complete delist) at all - expect just one pdf file.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheHecksler
I've checked his robots.txt - but this is ok. I've checked the META Robots - but they are on index,follow ... ok so far. I've checked his backlinks but could not found any massive linking from bad pages - just 6 backlinks and only four of them from designdomains.com which looks like a linklist or so. I've requested access to their GWT account if available in hope to find more infos, but does anyone of you may have a quick idea what els it could be? What could be the issue? I think that they got delisted due to any bad reason ... Let me know your Ideas 🙂 THANX 🙂 Sebi0 -
Should I redirect images when I migrate my site
We are about to migrate a large website with a fair few images (20,000). At the moment we include images in the sitemap.xml so they are indexed by Google and drive traffic (not sure how I can find out how much though). Current image slugs are like:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ArchMedia
http://website.com/assets/images/a2/65680/thumbnails/638x425-crop.jpg?1402460458 Like on the old site, images on the new website will also have unreadable cache slugs, like:
http://website.com/site_media/media/cache/ce/7a/ce7aeffb1e5bdfc8d4288885c52de8e3.jpg All content pages on the new site will have the same slugs as on the old site. Should I go through the trouble of redirecting all these images?0 -
Credit Links on Client Websites
I know there have been several people who have asked this but a lot of them were back in 2012 before many of the google changes. My question is the same though. With all the changes with Google's algorithm. Is it okay to put your link on the bottom of your clients website. Like Web Design by, etc. Part of the reason is to drive traffic but also if someone is actually interested who designed the website, they will click it. But now reading about how bad links can hurt you tremendously, it makes me second guess if this is ok. My gut feeling says, no.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | blackrino0 -
Different domains for multilingual website
Hey guys, A site that I'm currently working on as different domains for each website language. So for example: word1word2.com for the english version word3word4.com for the french version word5word6.com for spanish version .... Is it better to move all of the different languages to the same domain and use subfolders for each language /fr/... Please note that the domains being used bring in organic traffic as well as they are EMDs. Thank You.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BruLee0