Webmaster tools change of addresss
-
Hi Mozzers,
I am about to move a load of content from one site to another and switch off the first site. I've got all my 301s mapped and ready to go. My gosh, that's one heck of a piece of work - it better be worth it
I have been looking at Webmaster Tools Change of address. I want to know which site do I choose to change the address to? I have three versions of my site in webmaster tools:
- the ssl version (https)
- the non-ssl version (http)
- No www. in front
My site has a sitewide SSL certificate (company policy - personally, I'd only have it on the parts that need it, but life's too short for some battles...) so should I send everything to the https version? My instinct says the https version but I really can't afford to get this wrong.
Anyone have any thoughts on this? Please help!
Thank you,
Amelia xx
-
Thank you Chris.
I appreciate you taking the time to answer this question for me.
Best wishes,
Amelia
-
No problem at all. Good luck with the move
-Andy
-
If you've verified them all you can also tell Google your preferred version thus avoiding the headache as it would only use that one version and you wouldn't have to worry about three of them.
how to : https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/44231?hl=en
-
Hi Jstrong,
I have a cousin called J strong! I don't suppose you are the same person, but if you are, Hi James!!!
Thank you for pointing this out, yes it is very important to have a preferred domain set. I'm just about to double-check that I have done it.
Have a great day
Amelia xx
-
Thank you, you have confirmed my thinking on this. I will choose the https version.
I'm OCD and have verified all versions of my site in webmaster tools... Is this normal? I thought it was better to have and not need than not have and need... if you know what I mean?
Thanks again for responding, it's very kind and helpful of you to do so. I hope you are having a lovely day
Amelia
-
Hello,
Yes sounds like you need to redirect to the https: version. One thing to keep in mind though is to also set your preferred domain once the change is complete. Is the new site going to be https://www.domain.com or https://domain.com? Make sure the preferred domain matches this along with any redirects that are setup. It's important to be consistent.
-
Hi Amelia,
Which version of the site is it that has been verified in Webmaster tools? Google will see each as a separate site, so my guess will be that you need to choose the https.
-Andy
-
Use the site that you want to be your main url
so if you direct all your visitors to just htttp:www. use that
remember you also don't need to do it all at once you can migrate over time to help ease Google into it a bit more and help you not loose as much traffic in one go.
Hope it helps.
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
-
Website redesign- change of server . What to do with old site? Keep for a while or delete right away?
Hey Mozzers, Two days ago, we redesigned our website and changed the server at the same time to get faster loading times. Here is what we have done. The old site was hosted on ipage, new site with a new design hosted on UPCLOUD. We changed the A record to the new server, uploaded a new site, submitted a new sitemap to Google Search console, 301 redirected all old URLs to new ones, most have changed a bit. Old URLs were ending with " .html "the new ones do not have that at the end. Submitted AMP pages to Google as well. Now here is my question. Should we delete the old site completely from ipage or should we keep it for a while? Google has indexed the new URLs that were created with the redesign, these URLs did not exist on the old site. But it still shows most of the old URLs on SERPs (these are URLs that have been 301 redirected to a new equivalent page) I understand 2 days is not very long for Google to get everything right, but I am not sure what we should do with the old site? Keep it or get rid of it to help Google index the new one only. FYI every single old URL that appears on Google search when clicked on will take you to the right place, we made sure there are no 404s at all. As this is very important to our business and we get most of it from Google I want to make sure we do it right for SEO purposes. The agency that designed the site did not really know the answer to that question, as they do not have SEO specialists. Please help, any input you might have will be greatly appreciated.
Web Design | | Davit19850 -
Blogspot blog is subdomain, but domain is changing - How will this affect backlinks?
Hi Moz community, I appreciate the title is confusing, so let me explain. We use blogspot to host our blog. It's set up as a subdomain of our website. Let's call it: lovelyblog.lovelytraining.com Our website, in this example, is **lovelytraining.com ** We're migrating our website to a new domain: lovely.training We'll be redirecting everything on the primary website, so our link profile won't be lost. However, as the blog is hosted on blogspot, we'll lose links pointed to the blog. The blog would remain lovelyblog.lovelytraining.com - but our website would now be lovely.training The question is, has anyone migrated/redirected a blogspot blog in this way, to retain links? Secondly, is there another way we can tell Google that this is blog should be treated as a subdomain of our website? I'm sure I'm missing out something stupid, so don't go easy on me! Thanks all.
Web Design | | RobertChapman0 -
We use bigcommerce platform and want to access the bigcommerce server to change the way our product images display
Hi We use bigcommerce and want to chage the way we display multiple images for our products. At the moment in bigcommerce you switch between images by clicking the next image, we want the images to change when we hover the curser over the image. Does anyone know how to do this ? Regards Adrienne
Web Design | | CostumeD0 -
Website Home page suddenly disappeared after changing Hosting
HI All, My site was ranking very well and was in 1st page of google for most of my keywords. Last week we did some update to the site and moved it to new hosting and from then onwards I dont see my site home page in Google ranking . My Website Name is : royalevents.com.au. We used to be in 1st of Google for keywords like wedding Mandaps, Indian Wedding Mandaps etc, Would be great if some one helps us to figure out whats gone wrong .. I also did Webmaster Fetch as Google but nothing happened. Thanks
Web Design | | Verve-Innovation0 -
Is it necessary to Remove 301 redirects from Wordpress after removing the 404 url from Google Webmaster?
There were many 404 urls in my site found by Google Webmaster. I've redirected these urls to the relevant urls with 301 redirect in wordpress. After that I removed these 404 urls from Google Index through Webmaster. "Should I cleanup these 301 redirects from Wordpress or not? ". Help Needed.
Web Design | | SangeetaC0 -
Site health - webmaster tools
A bit of an odd one. In Webmaster Tools, there's the option to order sites by site health. When we do this our site - http://www.neooptic.com/ - is near the bottom, despite there being little or no crawl errors. Any ideas why this could be happening?
Web Design | | neooptic0 -
Homepage Menu Change
For the site I work on we would like to make a change on the homepage from having categories on the left nav to a meta menu on the top nav. The reason we are doing this is an attempt to both make finding products better for the customer and we feel it is more aesthetically pleasing. Could this negatively affect our SEO and ranking even if we use the exact same links? Are there any other negative repercussions you feel could come from this? Thanks for any help!
Web Design | | ClaytonKendall0
