How would I be able to move content from one domain to another?
-
I have a client that wants to migrate some of his site's content to a new domain, not all of the content, just some of it. This is not an address change. He wants to continue actively using the domain name where all this content currently resides, so it's not a matter of notifying search engines of an address change.
The first thing that comes to mind is the use of the canonical tag, but it's not making sense. Any recommendations?
Thanks in advance.
-
Hello Chris, you're absolutely right. It took me a while to conceptualize the process, but referring to projects where I've used 301's to redirect one URL to another helped me realize that I perform the task almost on a daily bases. The one twist that's a first for me is that of redirecting URL's from an active domain to another.
A note to readers that may have a similar question - the 301 redirect is implemented on the donor domain and not on the receiving domain (where content is being move to) explaining why the URL can no longer exist on the donor domain.
With much appreciation, thank you.
-
If a page of content is being moved from a URL on domain A to a URL on domain B and will no longer exist on domain A, then the 301 redirect from the first URL to the second would be used to indicate that. A 301 redirect doesn't have to redirect the whole site, it can be used on a per URL basis. Here, read through this info on redirects:
-
Wow, I think I experiencing an episode of "deer in the headlights". Whok
Thanks for the link, Chris, I'm still baffled. I also think, and please pardon if I'm mistaken, that there's an important factor that's being overlooked (my bad). The original domain (domain A) is going to remain in use curating some of the original content, and a new domain (domain B) is going to be established to curate some of the content migrated from domain A where the content was originally created. Implementing a 301 from one domain to another is not applicable since domain A is going to still be public facing with its own content.
l hope this is starting to make sense.
-
Completely agree with Chris!
In your question you mentioned that your client wants to migrate some of his content from one location to another and in order to successfully do that you should use 301redirection so that Google can transfer the juice to new location and visitors can also move to the new location without any hassle.
Canonicals comes in when you need one content on both locations but want to prefer one over other!
-
Emmanuel, it sounds like you're just talking about setting up 301 redirects from the URLs of the old locations to the URLs of the new location. . This can be done when changing content location within a domain or when changing it to another domain. The rel=canonical tag wouldn't be the right solution if you don't actually want the content to exist in both locations.
This Google webmaster tools info might be useful to you:
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 I have two brands and I market one in English (BrandA.com) and one in Spanish (BrandB.com), and the websites are identical but in different languages, would that have a negative impact on SEO due to duplicate content?
I have a client who wants a website in Spanish and one in English. Typically we would use a multi-language plugin for a single site (brandA.com/en or /es), but this client markets to their Spanish-speaking constituents under a different brand. So I am wondering if we have BrandA.com in English, and the exact same content in Spanish at BrandB.com if there will be negative SEO implications and/or if it will be recognized as duplicate content by search engines?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Designworks-SJ1 -
How do I get the sub-domain traffic to count as sub-directory traffic without moving off of WordPress?
I want as much traffic as possible to my main site, but right now my blog lives on a blog.brand.com URL rather than brand.com/blog. What are some good solutions for getting that traffic to count as traffic to my main site if my blog is hosted on WordPress? Can I just create a sub-directory page and add a rel canonical to the blog post?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | johnnybgunn0 -
Domain Authority... http://www.domain.com/ vs. http://domain.com vs. http://domain.com/
Hey Guys, Looking at Page Authority for my Site and ranking them in Decending Order, I see these 3 http://www.domain.com/ | Authority 62 http://domain.com | Authority 52 http://domain.com/ | Authority 52 Since the first one listed has the highest Authority, should I be using a 301 redirects on the lower ranking variations (which I understand how works) or should I be using rel="canonical" (which I don't really understand how it works) Also, if this is a problem that I should address, should we see a significant boost if fixed? Thanks ahead of time for anyone who can help a lost sailor who doesn't know how to sail and probably shouldn't have left shore in the first place. Cheers ZP!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mr_Snack0 -
HTTPS entire domain Vs. one URL
Long time no Moz! Ive been away with some server related issues, installing an AD at the company I work for, but I'm back. Our SSL cert just expired and I'm trying to determine the pros and cons of making an entire site SSL vs just the URL. Our previous set up was just a single domain. I know Google has hinted toward SSL preference, and I know its a little early to know for certain how much that's going to help, but I just wanted to know what everybody thought? It expired yesterday, so I have to do something. And we lost our previous credentials so I can't just renew the old one. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HashtagHustler0 -
Why does a site have no domain authority?
A website was built and launched eight months ago, and their domain authority is 1. When a site has been live for a while and has such a low DA, what's causing it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | optimalwebinc0 -
Redirect gateway domain to main domain?
We have following scenario: Our main website - www.esedirect.co.uk which gets a 1800 visits a day with around half of those from organic search. It's been around since 2004. Our original website - www.ese.co.uk which gets around 30 visits a day and really is nothing more than a doorway page with links to the above site and couple of other sites that belong to the same company. This is an old domain that's had content since 1997 and has good domain authority with some good links. We are considering doing a 301 redirect from www.ese.co.co.uk to www.esedirect.co.uk to redirect the link juice. I welcome opinions to any possible negative effects this could give and how beneficial doing this will be. Thanks, Lee
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ese0 -
What constitutes duplicate content?
I have a website that lists various events. There is one particular event at a local swimming pool that occurs every few months -- for example, once in December 2011 and again in March 2012. It will probably happen again sometime in the future too. Each event has its own 'event' page, which includes a description of the event and other details. In the example above the only thing that changes is the date of the event, which is in an H2 tag. I'm getting this as an error in SEO Moz Pro as duplicate content. I could combine these pages, since the vast majority of the content is duplicate, but this will be a lot of work. Any suggestions on a strategy for handling this problem?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ChatterBlock0 -
How to resolve Duplicate Page Content issue for root domain & index.html?
SEOMoz returns a Duplicate Page Content error for a website's index page, with both domain.com and domain.com/index.html isted seperately. We had a rewrite in the htacess file, but for some reason this has not had an impact and we have since removed it. What's the best way (in an HTML website) to ensure all index.html links are automatically redirected to the root domain and these aren't seen as two separate pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ContentWriterMicky0