Moving Content From One Site To Another
-
Generally speaking if I am just moving a couple of articles from one site to another I need to 301 redirect those old URL's to the new ones right? And even if a webpage doesn't have any links pointing to it, it is best practice to employ 301 redirects correct? After a while, after Google etc. has crawled the new location of the content you can then delete the old URL, is that right? And if other sites are linking to the old location they should be notified of the new location but even if a page has links pointing to it, is it best practice to delete that page after Google has crawled the new and you've notified the webmaster?
I've think I've got this right, I just want some clarification on this issue. Thanks.
-
You're pretty much right! I'd just add a few summary points for clarification:
1. 301-redirect old URLs to the new ones
2. Change any rel=canonical tags on the old pages so that the tags reference the new URLs
3. Add rel=canonical tags to the pages on the new site and make sure that they point to those same pages
4. Inform anyone linking to the old pages that the URLs have changed.
5. Check items on the pages such as media and images so that the URLs of those items themselves are hosted on the new domain and not the old one
I would not delete the old pages (at least not right away) because you never know how long it will take Google to understand that their locations have changed. Only delete them unless you have a pressing need to do so.
If you have any other questions, let me know!
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
-
Unsolved Duplicate Content
We have multiple collections being flagged as duplicate content - but I can't find where these duplications are coming from? The duplicate content has no introductory text, and no meta description. Please see examples:- This is the correct collection page:-
Technical SEO | | Caroline_Ardmoor
https://www.ardmoor.co.uk/collections/deerhunter This is the incorrect collection page:-
https://www.ardmoor.co.uk/collections/vendors How do I stop this incorrect page from showing?0 -
Country and Language tags-Running an SEO audit on a site that definitely has more than one language, but nothing is pulling up. I don't quite understand href lang or how to go about it. HELP HELP!
Ran an SEO audit and I don't really understand country and language tags. For example, sony.com definitely has more than one language, but how do I seo check href lang ? Do I inspect the page? etc?
Technical SEO | | Mindgruver0 -
How to handle one section of duplicate content
Hi guys, i'm wondering if I can get some best practice advice in preparation for launching our new e-commerce website. For the new website we are creating location pages with a description and things to do which will lead the user to hotels in the location. For each hotel page which relates to the location we will have the same 'Things to do' content. This is what the content will look like on each page: Location page Location title (1-3 words) Location description (150-200 words) Things to do (200-250 words) Reasons to visit location (15 words) Hotel page Hotel name and address (10 words) Short description (25 words) Reasons to book hotel (15 words) Hotel description (100-200 words) Friendly message why to visit (15 words) Hotel reviews feed from trust pilot Types of break and information (100-200 words) Things to do (200-250 words) My question is how much will we penalised for having the same 'Things to do' content on say up to 10 hotels + 1 location page? In an ideal world we want to develop a piece of code which tells search engines that the original content lies on the location page but this will not be possible before we go live. I'm unsure whether we should just go and take the potential loss in traffic or remove the 'Things to do' section on hotel pages until we develop the piece of code?
Technical SEO | | CHGLTD1 -
Google how deal with licensed content when this placed on vendor & client's website too. Will Google penalize the client's site for this ?
One of my client bought licensed content from top vendor of Health Industry. This same content is on the vendor's website & my client's site also but on my site there is a link back to vendor is placed which clearly tells to anyone that this is a licensed content & we bought from this vendor. My client bought paid top quality content for best source of industry but at this same this is placed on vendor's website also. Will Google penalize my client's website for this ? Niche is HEALTH
Technical SEO | | sourabhrana1 -
301'd site, but new site is not getting picked up in google.
Hi I'm having big issues! Any help would be greatly appreciated This is the 3rd time this happened. Every time I switch my old site greatcleanjokes.com to the new design of chokeonajoke.com traffic goes almost completely down (I even tried out the new design on greatcleanjokes [to see if it was a 301 issue] and traffic also went down.) What can possibly be wrong with this new site that google just doesn't like it ?! I was ranking high up for many big phrase like joke of the day, corny jokes, clean jokes, short jokes. Now It's all gone. I also think it's strange that when I search for site:chokeonajoke.com the post pages show up before the category pages!? Here is the old site http://web.archive.org/web/20140406214615/http://www.greatcleanjokes.com/ Here is the new one http://chokeonajoke.com/ If you can't figure out anything do you know of anyone I can hire who may be able to figure it out?
Technical SEO | | Nickys22111 -
Database driven content producing false duplicate content errors
How do I stop the Moz crawler from creating false duplicate content errors. I have yet to submit my website to google crawler because I am waiting to fix all my site optimization issues. Example: contactus.aspx?propid=200, contactus.aspx?propid=201.... these are the same pages but with some old url parameters stuck on them. How do I get Moz and Google not to consider these duplicates. I have looked at http://moz.com/learn/seo/duplicate-content with respect to Rel="canonical" and I think I am just confused. Nick
Technical SEO | | nickcargill0 -
Site Categorization?
I know getting site categories to appear under the site are dependent on a lot of factors including site mapping. We have a site that does the categorization thing when you type in the sites url name however more people search for the name of the talent to find the site and the short url on the site is just his name, but shorter. However I was just wondering is their a way to optimize the site so that way we could get categorization to show up under the sites URL when they search for the talents full name I ask because the amount of people looking for the talents full name rather than the short name is a lot larger and I would like to see if we can take advantage of the real estate, but I honestly don't think there is a way, however I figured I would open it up to discussion to see if anyone has any ideas. Example: Site name is ABCD you type this into Google and you get ABCD.com about blog how to contact However the actual person whose site it is is ABCDEF and when you type that in you just get: ABCD.com without any of the categories appearing below the url. And that is what I'm asking about. Thanks as I can't seem to find a lot of information on this. However if there is another spot on the site talking about this please let me know I may just not be searching with the right terms.
Technical SEO | | KateGMaker0 -
Google caching meta tags from another site?
We have several sites on the same server. On the weekend we relocated some servers, changing IP address. A client has since noticed something freaky with the meta tags. 1. They search for their companyname, and another site from the same server appears in position 1. It is completely unrelated, has never happened before, and the company name is not used in any incoming text links. Eg search for company1 on Google. Company1.com.au appears at position 2, but at position1 is school1.com.au. The words company1 don't appear anywhere on the site. I've analysed all incoming links with a gazillion tools, and can't find any link text of company1, linking to school1. 2. Even more freaky, searching for company1.com.au at Google. The results at Google in position 1 for the last three days has been: Meta Title for school1 (but hovering/clicking actual goes to URL for company1)
Technical SEO | | ozgeekmum
Meta Description for school1
URL for company1.com.au Clicking on the cached copy of result1, it shows a cached version of school1 taken on March 18. Today is 29 March. Logically we are trying to get Google to spider both sites again quickly. We've asked the clients to update their home pages. Resubmitted xml sitemaps. Checked the HTTP status codes - both are happily returning 200s. Different cookies. I found another instance on a forum: http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/10578/incorrect-meta-information-in-google Any ideas?0