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.
Temporarily shut down a site
-
What would be the best way to temporarily shut down a site the right way and not have a negative impact on SEO?
-
I asked the Q&A associates their opinion, and several people also responded that a 503 would be the way to go.
-
It is due to some legal matter. So we need it to shut it down
-
Can you give us some more details about the shutdown (the reasons, why it needs to be so long, etc)? We can help you a bit better if we know more information.
When we switched from SEOmoz.org to moz.com, we were only down for half an hour, if that. If this is about upgrading, is there a testing server that you can use to get the website rebuilt and tested on the testing/staging server before you make it live? We used multiple staging servers to test out the site and did lots of checks so that we had minimal downtime when it came time to move the site.
-
What if it is more than a week?
-
I'm also assuming that you're talking about just a day or two, and not two months. There was a post on Moz last year about this that can also help, in addition to the good info provided by CleverPhD http://moz.com/blog/how-to-handle-downtime-during-site-maintenance
-
Appreciate the positive comment EGOL!
-
That was a great answer. Thanks. I didn't know that.
-
Thank you - please mark my response as Good Answer if it helps.
Cheers!
-
Thank you
-
According to Matt Cutts
"According to Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts if your website is down just for a day, such as your host being down or a server transfer, there shouldn't be any negative impact to your search rankings. However, if the downtime is extended, such as for two weeks, it could have impact on your search rankings because Google doesn't necessarily want to send the user to a website that they know has been down, because it provides the user with a poor user experience.
Google does make allowances for websites that are sporadically having downtime, so Googlebot will visit again 24 hours later so and see if the site is accessible."
That said, what should you show Google?
http://yoast.com/http-503-site-maintenance-seo/
According to Yoast, you should not show a 200 (ok) or 404 (file not found), but a 503 code on all pages with a retry-after header to Google.
The 503 (http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html) tells Google "The server is currently unable to handle the request due to a temporary overloading or maintenance of the server. The implication is that this is a temporary condition which will be alleviated after some delay. If known, the length of the delay MAY be indicated in a Retry-After header. If no Retry-After is given, the client SHOULD handle the response as it would for a 500 response.:
The retry after tells Google when to come back. You should set this to a time that is generous to allow you plenty of time to get everything back up and running.
Another point from Yoast that he links to https://plus.google.com/+PierreFar/posts/Gas8vjZ5fmB - if the robots.txt file shows a 503 then Google will stop wasting time crawling all your pages (and wasting time) until it sees a 200 back on your robots.txt file. So it is key that you get the 503 and retry after properly on the robots.txt
Cheers!
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
-
Splitting One Site Into Two Sites Best Practices Needed
Okay, working with a large site that, for business reasons beyond organic search, wants to split an existing site in two. So, the old domain name stays and a new one is born with some of the content from the old site, along with some new content of its own. The general idea, for more than just search reasons, is that it makes both the old site and new sites more purely about their respective subject matter. The existing content on the old site that is becoming part of the new site will be 301'd to the new site's domain. So, the old site will have a lot of 301s and links to the new site. No links coming back from the new site to the old site anticipated at this time. Would like any and all insights into any potential pitfalls and best practices for this to come off as well as it can under the circumstances. For instance, should all those links from the old site to the new site be nofollowed, kind of like a non-editorial link to an affiliate or advertiser? Is there weirdness for Google in 301ing to a new domain from some, but not all, content of the old site. Would you individually submit requests to remove from index for the hundreds and hundreds of old site pages moving to the new site or just figure that the 301 will eventually take care of that? Is there substantial organic search risk of any kind to the old site, beyond the obvious of just not having those pages to produce any more? Anything else? Any ideas about how long the new site can expect to wander the wilderness of no organic search traffic? The old site has a 45 domain authority. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Multilingual Site and 301 redirection
Hey there awesome people of Moz I have this site that has many languages in it. The main language is English and my developer did the following www.example.com ( is the main site ) which redirects with a 301 to www.example.com/en if your geo location is supported by our languages then you will automatically be redirected to whatever language you have in your country but does the first language with is english have to 301 redirect to www.example.com/en ? I thought that the right way is to just leave /en at the root file. Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Angelos_Savvaidis0 -
Do I have to optimize every page on my site?
Hi guys I run my own photography webstie (www.hemeravisuals.co.uk Going through the process optimizing my page for seo. I have one question I have a few gallery pages with no text etc? Do I still have to optimize these ? Would it rank my site lower if they weren't optimized? And how can i do this sucessfully with little text on these pages ( I have indepth text on these subjects on my services & pricing pages? Kind Regards Cam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hemeravisuals0 -
Redirecting non www site
Hello Ladies and Gentlemen. I 100% agree with the redirecting of the non www domain name. After all we see so many times, especially in MOZ how the two different domains contain different links, different DA and of course different PA. So I have posed the question to our IT company, "How would we go about redirecting our non www domain to the www version?", "Where would we do that?", " we cant do the redirect on our webserver because the website is listed as an IP address, not a domain name, so would we do the redirect somewhere at GoDaddy?" who is currently maintain our DNS record So here is the response from IT: " I would setup a CNAME record in DNS (GoDaddy), such that no matter if you go to the bare domain, or the www, you end up in the same place. As for SEO, having a 301 redirect for your bare domain isn't necessary, because both the bare domain and the www are the same domain. 301 is a redirect for "permanently moved" and is common when you change domain names. Using the bare domain or the www are NOT DIFFERENT DOMAINS, so the 301 would not be accurate, and you'd be telling engines you've moved, when you haven't - which may negatively impact your rank. It sounds to me that IT is NOT recommending the redirect. How can this be? Or are we talking about two different things? Will the redirect cause the melt down as the IT company suggests? Or do they nut understand SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Davenport-Tractor0 -
URL Structure for Directory Site
We have a directory that we're building and we're not sure if we should try to make each page an extension of the root domain or utilize sub-directories as users narrow down their selection. What is the best practice here for maximizing your SERP authority? Choice #1 - Hyphenated Architecture (no sub-folders): State Page /state/ City Page /city-state/ Business Page /business-city-state/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knowyourbank
4) Location Page /locationname-city-state/ or.... Choice #2 - Using sub-folders on drill down: State Page /state/ City Page /state/city Business Page /state/city/business/
4) Location Page /locationname-city-state/ Again, just to clarify, I need help in determining what the best methodology is for achieving the greatest SEO benefits. Just by looking it would seem that choice #1 would work better because the URL's are very clear and SEF. But, at the same time it may be less intuitive for search. I'm not sure. What do you think?0 -
Franchise sites on subdomains
I've been asked by a client to optimise a a webpage for a location i.e. London. Turns out that the location is actually a franchise of the main company. When the company launch a new franchise, so far they have simply added a new page to the main site, for example: mysite.co.uk/sub-folder/london They have so far done this for 10 or so franchises and task someone with optimising that page for their main keyword + location. I think I know the answer to this, but would like to get a back up / additional info on it in terms of ranking / seo benefits. I am going to suggest the idea of using a subdomain for each location, example: london.mysite.co.uk Would this be the correct approach. If you think yes, why? Many thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webrevolve0 -
Multiple sites in the same niche
Hi All A question regarding multiple sites in the same niche... If I have say 10 sites all targetting the same niche yet all on different C-class IPs with different hosts, registrars, whois data and ages can I use the same template, or will Google discern a pattern? Basically I have developed a WordPress template which I want to use on the sites albeit with different logos / brand colours. NB/ All of the 10 sites will have unique, original content and they will NOT be interlinked
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danielparry1 -
Optimize a Classifieds Site
Hi, I have a classifieds website and would like to optimize it. The issues/questions I have: A Classifieds site has, say, 500 cities. Is it better to create separate subdomains for each city (http://city_name.site.com) or subdirectory (http://site.com/city_name)? Now in each city, there will be say 50 categories. Now these 50 categories are common across all the cities. Hence, the layout and content will be the same with difference of latest ads from each city and name of the city and the urls pointing to each category in the relevant city. The site architecture of a classifieds site is highly prone to have major content which is not really a duplicate content. What is the best way to deal with this situation? I have been hit by Panda in April 2011 with traffic going down 50%. However, the traffic since then has been around same level. How to best handle the duplicate content penalty in case with site like a classifieds site. Cheers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ketan90