Bad site migration - what to do!
-
Hi Mozzers - I'm just looking at a site which has been damaged by a very poor site migration.
Basically, the old URLs were 301'd to a page on the new website (not a 404) telling everyone the page no longer existed.
They did not 301 old pages to equivalent new pages. So I just checked Google WMT and saw 1,000 crawl errors - basically the old URLs.
This migration was done back in February, since when traffic to the website has never recovered. Should I fix this now? Is it worth implementing the correct 301s now, after such a timelapse?
-
Thanks for advice Paul - I've edited pages with poor backlink profiles out of redirect and 301'd the rest to relevant pages within the new website, and traffic has spiked up a bit. There were some very powerful links (national newspapers, etc) the new site was missing out on.
-
Gonna have to disagree with Rob a bit here on one point. Definitely agree that it's still worth implementing the correct 301 redirects. However, by only doing it for page already getting traffic or having links, you're going to miss out on potentially a substantial amount of future traffic, especially long-tail (which is very valuable).
There can be many pages which Google has indexes and which can return for search results even though the pages don't have incoming links. To my mind, it would be a shame to throw away that traffic. It is possible to collect a list of all the pages of your site Google has in it's index, but its often easier to just correctly redirect them all. Often groups of pages can be redirected using a single redirect to reduce the amount of work involved.
At the very least, make certain you have implemented an effective 404 page, and also ensure you have included your Google Analytics tracking code on the 404 page. Then you can use a combination of Analytics and Webmaster Tools to catch any incoming 404s and get them redirected immediately.
Does that make sense?
Paul
-
Thanks SErOb - good advice!
-
At this point, I'd only adjust 301's for the pages actual users are trying to access and pages with good backlinks.
Google will always have a record of the old pages in WMT, don't fret over that.
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
-
I have a metadata issue. My site crawl is coming back with missing descriptions, but all of the pages look like site tags (i.e. /blog/?_sft_tag=call-routing)
I have a metadata issue. My site crawl is coming back with missing descriptions, but all of the pages look like site tags (i.e. /blog/?_sft_tag=call-routing)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | amarieyoussef0 -
Adult Toys Sites
Does anyone know of any changes SEOwise when running an adult toy site versus a normal eCommerce site? Is there any tips or suggestions that are worth knowing to achieve rankings faster? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | the-gate-films0 -
Double hyphen in URL - bad?
Instead of a URL such as domain.com/double-dash/ programming wants to use domain.com/double--dash/ for some reason that makes things easier for them. Would a double dash in the URL have a negative effect on the page ranking?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CFSSEO0 -
Site Architecture: How flat is too flat?
There's a lot of debate out there as far as too many internal links or too many levels of a website. I've seen the videos from Rand and I've read a lot of the posts here on Moz, but I just want to know where everyone stands on this. Anyone have experience with architecture while working on a large E-commerce site? We're talking Millions of pages and over 1,000 links off the homepage alone. Anyways, I don't want to get too specific. I mostly just want to hear about experiences of the community. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GalcoIndustrial0 -
Is this site worth subscribing to?
Hi everyone is, the below site worthwhile submitting to? I see one of our competitors is on here and the article they have published has in turn be picked up by other sites. Is the financial cost worth the back link reward? https://app.prweb.com/Main.aspx?Entity=Home
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Hardley10 -
PDF on financial site that duplicates ~50% of site content
I have a financial advisor client who has a downloadable PDF on his site that contains about 9 pages of good info. Problem is much of the content can also be found on individual pages of his site. Is it best to noindex/follow the pdf? It would be great to let the few pages of original content be crawlable, but I'm concerned about the duplicate content aspect. Thanks --
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 540SEO0 -
Site dancing
Hi guys I have a site which is dancing. I mean one day is on position 20 , if I put more backlinks is falling, after rising again,, I dont know what is going on. The site is 2 years old, pr 2, authority 35. Why this is happening? Usually when he appears again is ranking higher, but today he disappear totally from rankings. Maybe return tomorrow? But anyway why is dancing? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nyanainc0 -
SEO Consultant for site audit
Can someone recommend an excellent SEO who can perform a full site audit of my fairly large Wordpress site? The site receives about 14,000 visits per month but traffic is waining one month after a recent change. Need analysis of some funky stuff in my Webmaster tools and overall site review.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JSOC0