Domain Migration of high traffic site:
-
We plan to perform a domain migration in 6 months time.
I read the different articles on moz relating to domain migration, but some doubts remain:-
Moving some linkworthy content upfront to new domain was generally recommended. I have such content (free e-learning) that I could move already now to new domain.
Should I move it now or just 2 months before migration?
Should I be concerned whether this content and early links could indicate to google a different topical theme of the new domain ? E.g. in our case free elearning app vs a commercial booking of presential courses of my core site which is somehow but not extremely strongly related) and links for elearning app may be very specific from appstores and from sites about mobile apps. -
we still have some annoying .php3 file extensions in many of our highest traffic pages and I would like to drop the file-extension (no further URL change). It was generally recommended to minimize other changes at the same time of domain migration, but on the other hand implementing later another 301 again may also not be optimum and it would save time to do it all at the same time. Shall I do the removal of the file extension at the same time of the domain migration or rather schedule it for 3 months later?
-
On the same topic, would the domain migration be a good occasion to move to https instead of http at the same time, or also should we rather do this at a different time?
Any thoughts or suggestions?
-
-
Marcus, Arnout, Cyrus, excellent comments. Thanks a lot.
-
uuhh thats a long time for bouncing back.
I would use a 301 redirect to assets from old to new domain. This should give clear signal to google to where content lives, or do I oversee anything here?
My key concern really is that google may get signals that new domain is about topic of asset I am moving first and then when I migrate later my core content, it may be more difficult to rank for core content since google associates the new domain with the topical focus of content that was moved first. Is this something you would be concerned about? -
It took us 6-8 months to bounce back.
Yes, I'm actually worried about sending confusing signals to Google about where the content is suppose to live.
I don't like making Google think
-
Cyrus, thanks a lot for the advice.
In the long-run, what do you think is the percentage of organic traffic you lost at moz.com due to the domain migration? 30% was just short-term effect, right?
Regarding moving assets upfront, it would be quite easy to do in our case.
But would you be concerned about giving google wrong signals about topic of domain which may make it more difficult later to rank our core content well? -
Keep in mind this is a complex situation with lots of moving parts, so there are no "right" answers.
That said, you're dealing with a lot of potential redirects:
- Site migration
- HTTPS
- .php extension rewriting
On one hand, I'm concerned if you stagger these out, you'll be diluting your authority through several 301 redirects.
In this case, might be best to do it all at once.On the other hand, doing it all at once greatly increases the chance of something going wrong. In this case, best to stagger things out.
At Moz, we went with "do it all at once" when we migrated to moz.com. Needless to say, we didn't do everything perfect and our organic traffic dropped nearly 30%, instead of the 15% we would have normally expected from a smaller migration.
Regardless, I'd still preference the "all at once" approach, and just be very diligent with your redirects, making sure not to drop pages, rewrite content, change title tags, etc.
As for moving big assets over ahead of time, I know some people endorse it, but I haven't seen a ton of evidence that it makes a significant difference. If it complicates things, I'd likely avoid it.
Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.
-
- we still have some annoying .php3 file extensions in many of our highest traffic pages and I would like to drop the file-extension (no further URL change). It was generally recommended to minimize other changes at the same time of domain migration, but on the other hand implementing later another 301 again may also not be optimum and it would save time to do it all at the same time. Shall I do the removal of the file extension at the same time of the domain migration or rather schedule it for 3 months later?
I would do it all in once.
- On the same topic, would the domain migration be a good occasion to move to https instead of http at the same time, or also should we rather do this at a different time?
I would do it at the same time but make sure you have all variations of the URL http and https and www and non-www verified in GWT so you can point GWT the best one.
-
Hey
This is one of those jobs that has to be done very carefully and as a rule of thumb I would always look to minimise the number of variables. If you are simply changing the URL from one domain to another then it should be fairly straightforward with 301 redirection for the domain itself and an update to the domain in webmaster tools.
With regards to HTTPS and the .php3 pages you have two options
1. make that change now
2. make that change some point after everything else is changed and stabilised
My thinking here would be to get everything as dialled in as possible BEFORE the move to the new domain. Conduct a full technical audit, SEO audit and do whatever you can to optimise the technical aspects of the site. I am talking squeaky clean technical SEO you can see your face in. So, a change to the php3 files, a move to HTTPS - you could do all of that now (along with anything else you find during the technical audit).
Main thinking here is to get everything as perfect as possible pre move - minimise the surface area for potential problems - minimise the number of variables when you make the change - then should anything go wrong you have as clear an idea as possible where the problem lies.
My main advice is to simplify the move as much as possible so anything you can do now rather than later will only make your life easier and the move simpler.
Hope that helps!
Marcus
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
-
Bad if Hosting Company Performs Domain Migration
InMotion Hosting hosts our domain. At the moment, we use domain "A". Domain "B" redirect to domain "A" . Domain "B"" better represent our brand and we want to redirect domain "A" to "B". Our website is designed in Wordpress. It contains about 750 pages. At the moment we do not have an SSL certificate. I would like to add the SSL certificate at the same time we migrate the domain. The data we collect on the site are company name, phone number, email address etcetera. No transactions. I was told that the Auto SSL free certificate is fine and that there is no need to pay for a certificate. Is this correct? My developer has told me that installing an SSL certificate would take about 8 hours. And that migrating the domain would take 24 hours, plus or minus 5 hours. My developer is very professional, and usually does a great job but this seems costly considering a $24/hour labor rate. It also seems like an inordinate amount of time. Several well rated (100% approval) Upwork developers are willing to perform this job for less than $200. Huge differential!! Also, Inmotion Hosting is willing to migrate the site and install the certificates for free. But pay nothing and the quality is usually questionable. Any thoughts?? Also, I have a lot to lose in terms of SEO if something goes wrong. Are there any specifications that I should insist on to make sure the migration proceed smoothly? What do I need to modify on Google Analytics once the migration is done. Any steps I should take to ensure the maintenance of page rank? Thanks!!!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
Own Domains shown as Spam Links in Open Site Explorer
Hi ! I have 7 Domains that I bought that point to the same webspace as my main domain. In Open Site Explorer they are showed as spam links. So to solve the issue I redirected the links to an empty subdirectory on the same server which is different from the directory the main domain is linking to. But nevertheless the domains are still showing up as spam. Why might that be? What can I do to get rid of these domains? In fact I only need the main domain. Cheers, Marc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RWW0 -
Does blocking foreign country IP traffic to site, hurt my SEO / US Google rankings?
I have a website is is only of interest to US visitors. 99% (at least) of Adsense income is from the US. But I'm getting constant attempts by hackers to login to my admin account. I have countermeasures fo combat that and am initiating others. But here's my question: I am considering not allowing any non US, or at least any non-North American, traffic to the site via a Wordpress plugin that does this. I know it will not affect my business negatively, directly. However, are there any ramifications of the Google bots of these blocked countries not being able to access my site? Does it affect the rankings of my site in the US Google searches. At the very least I could block China, Russia and some eastern European countries.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bizzer0 -
How to migrate from an asp.net to wordpress without loosing domain authority?
I would like to migrate my current website, which is asp.net, to WordPress. However the current asp.net is sitting on hosting which is windows based and WordPress isn't very compatible. Do I need to migrate hosting to a Linux based hosting provider? But if I do can I still migrate the asp.net files from my current website so I can 301 redirect? Any help on this would be great. Regards, Tom
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CoGri0 -
How do i migrate from Volusion to Magento with the same domain using 301 redirect?
We are thinking about migrating our site from Volusion to Magento due to traffic reasons, our site's been growing and we're going way over the bandwidth limit (40gb) for Volusion every month. It only make sense for us to start on Magento CE where we can host it on our site and use our own bandwidth. We will be using the same domain, and changing our URLs to make things better (we were somewhat restricted by Volusion so we couldn't optimize some of our URL addresses). Here's comes the main question, since we are ranking pretty good for the keywords that we're targeting, we ABSOLUTELY DON'T want to lose any traffic or ranking from our pages, I know that there's something called the 301 redirect that we can use, but how can this be done? When we migrate the site, we will need to point our domain to Magento from Volusion, so basically Volusion store will be down... if we are changing domain names then the 301 redirect makes sense because we can have the original store live while it's redirecting to a completely new address. Is there any method to still setup this 301 redirect, or is there something else I can do to save our rankings??? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | s2bkevin0 -
Merging Domains
Up until last week, we had separate domains for each of our 3 products. We've now merged two products to sit under one URL. The merge coincided with a CMS upgrade which effectively killed all of our old URLs save for the homepage. Is it best for me to 301 the old homepage to it's new place, as well as the rest of the old site's top pages to according pages on the new site? Or is there a better solution?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | taylor.craig0 -
High ranked web site on Google GONE - but webspam team says nothing wrong
We purchased several weeks ago a .org blog that has been highly ranked (number 1 on competetive keywords) for at least a year. it is a blog We moved the blog to our IP range and it went from #1 on top keyword and first page on another to the home page just gone. Now there was a secondary page indexed that stayed on page 5 for the keyword the home page was ranked #1 but the home page (which was high ranked page is just gone) We wrote the Google Webmaster team for reconsideration but they wrote back and said the web spam team said nothing wrong. A contact of mine who works for one of the most well known SEO compaines in the world says because we moved it the site could disappear for a week or so but the "algos would realize" and return it to that top spot soon. Does anyone know anything about moving a site to new IP and issues that can result?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TBKO0 -
On-Site Optimization Tips for Job site?
I am working on a job site that only ranks well for the homepage with very low ranking internal pages. My job pages do not rank what so ever and are database driven and often times turn to 404 pages after the job has been filled. The job pages have to no content either. Anybody have any technical on-site recommendations for a job site I am working on especially regarding my internal pages? (Cross Country Allied.com)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia0