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
-
Is my site being penalized?
I've gone through all the points on https://moz.com/blog/technical-site-audit-for-2015 but the site only ranks for its brand name after months. The website is not ranking in the top 100 for any main keywords (2,3,4 word phrases), only for a handful of very long phrases (4+). All of the content is unique, all pages are indexed, the website is fast and doesn't contain any crawl errors and there are a couple of links pointing to it. There is a sitewide follow link in the footer pointing to another domain, its parent company and vice-versa. This is not done for any SEO reasons but the companies are related and also the products are supplementary of each other. Could this be an issue? Or is my site being penalized by something else?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Robbern0 -
Same-server, Same-Market, Micro-Sites backlinks.. good or bad?
Hi there, We are a real estate listings portal and we also create micro sites for real estate agents. These micro-sites are hosted on our same server, similar in structure, different in design... different in content. They all link to us but not within each other. They all link to us because they have to access our login system in order to manage their property listings on their own micro sites (which updates on our own website too). (Also as marketing for others to see that we have built their sites with our engine). Would all these backlinks be considered to be coming from the same c-block? Thus, being sub-optimal for our SEO efforts? Should we worry about grouping them and giving them separate IP addresses? Should we add nofollow tags to these links or are there any other things you would worry about? Many thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | propertypalseo0 -
Site Structured Navigated by Cookies
Is it advisable to have a site structure that is navigated via URLs rather than cookies? In a website that has several location based pages - each with their own functions and information? Is this a SEO priority? Will it help to combat duplicate content? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | J_Sinclair0 -
Why my site it's not being indexed?
Hello.... I got to tell that I feel like a newbie (I am, but know I feel like it)... We were working with a client until january this year, they kept going on their own until september that they contacted us again... Someone on the team that handled things while we were gone, updated it´s robots.txt file to Disallow everything... for maybe 3 weeks before we were back in.... Additionally they were working on a different subdomain, the new version of the site and of course the didn't block the robots on that one. So now the whole site it's been duplicated, even it´s content, the exact same pages exist on the suddomain that was public the same time the other one was blocked. We came in changes the robots.txt file on both server, resend all the sitemaps, sent our URL on google+... everything the book says... but the site it´s not getting indexed. It's been 5 weeks now and no response what so ever. We were highly positioned on several important keywords and now it's gone. I now you guys can help, any advice will be highly appreciated. thanks Dan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daniel.alvarez0 -
Is CloudFlare bad for SEO?
I have been hit by DDoS attacks lately...not on a huge scale, but probably done by some "script kiddies" or competitors of mine. Still, I need to take some action in order to protect my server and my site against all of this spam traffic that is being sent to it. In the process of researching the tools available for defending a website from a DDoS attack, I came across the service offered by CloudFlare.com. According to the CloudFlare website, they protect your site against a DDoS attack by showing users/visitors they find suspicious an interstitial that asks them if they are a real user or a bot...this interstitial contains a Captcha that suspicious users are asked to enter in order to visit the site. I'm just wondering what kind of an effect such an interstitial could have on my Google rankings...I can imagine that such a thing could add to increased click-backs to the SERPs and, if Google detects this, to lower rankings. Has anyone had experience with the DDoS protection services offered by CloudFlare, who can say a word or two regarding any effects this may have on SEO? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | masterfish1 -
2 sites or one sites: 2 locations
Hello, I have a dog training client who is offering services in 2 separate locations. We're looking to be first in the non-local search results and also rank well in google places. Would it be better to go for 2 separate sites or one site and try to rank for 2 different locations with one site? There's both local and standard search results when we type in our keywords. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Should I link my similar sites together?
Hi I currently have two sites within exactly the same market. I've just purchased a third website from someone. Should I link these sites together? (i.e. in the page header should I cross link them or point two of them to the third?) If I do this will it harm them if they are on the same C-Class IP blocks? Is using private domains and different hosting companies considered dodgey in any way? Basically I'm a big wimp and don't want to do anything potentially that might potentially hurt my rankings;)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blendfish0 -
Domain migration strategy
Imagine you have a large site on an aged and authoritative domain. For commercial reasons the site has to be moved to a new domain, and in the process is going to be revamped significantly. Not an ideal starting scenario obviously to be biting off so much all at once, but unavoidable. The plan is to run the new site in beta for about 4 weeks, giving users the opportunity to play with it and provide feedback. After that there will be a hard cut over with all URLs permanently redirected to the new domain. The hard cut over is necessary due to business continuity reasons, and real complexity in trying to maintain complex UI and client reporting over multiple domains. Of course we'll endeavour to mitigate the impact of the change by telling G about the change in WMC and ensuring we monitor crawl errors etc etc. My question is whether we should allow the new site to be indexed during the beta period? My gut feeling is yes for the following reasons: It's only 4 weeks and until such time as we start redirecting the old site the new domain won't have much whuffie so there's next to no chance the site will ranking for anything much. Give Googlebot a headstart on indexing a lot of URLs so they won't all be new when we cut over the redirects Is that sound reasoning? Is the duplication during that 4 week beta period likely to have some negative impact that I am underestimating?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Charlie_Coxhead0