301 process, migration to new domain

[Eurasmus.com]

Hi all!

We have an old site wordpress based, with great ranking and PR 7, called www.europe-internship.com which is going to be migrated into our new Django site www.eurasmus.com (specifically eurasmus.com/en/europe-internships)
The new one is a much more advanced version that we will keep developing.

We have been migrating the information already but we are planning to apply the 301s in the next weeks to start passing the SEO value to our new site and traffic.

We have all the url structures and everything checked and technically we are ready for it.
Therefore, we are almost ready.

I have 2 questions:

1. The new site includes more services, like accommodation, information...not only internships. Therefore, should we point the most relevant urls from our previous site to our home to share the value or just to the internships section? I am afraid that if the bounce rate goes higher from the 301 we could loose some value...

2)Should we point all the urls at the same time to the new site? Home, vacancies, blog pages, etc... or start gradually doing it to see how it goes till we make it to all the pages including the home?

The old site still makes some money and I am not sure how quick will be to pass the SEO value, so in the way we may loose few thousand euros...We understand that, but we want to check what would be the best in your opinion.

Let me know what you think and your opinion!

Thank you in advance!

[Eurasmus.com]

Totally clear now.

Thanks!

[evolvingSEO]

Jose

You should always point redirects at pages that have the same, or 98% the same content. See Cyrus's article: http://moz.com/blog/save-your-website-with-redirects - if you point all the redirects into the Internships section, the rest of the site should inherit a little bit of that link authority. If you point old internship pages at your homepage, Google will probably see the content is a bit different and likely not pass value anyway.

So treat the new Internships section on the new site, as a little site inside the big one and redirect your old Internships site into the new internships section. Do it page by page so all the content matches

[Eurasmus.com]

Hi Dan!

Thanks for your answer.
Well, the area of internships in the site is let´s say its 99% the same.
Before it was just an internship site and now it has accommodaiton  and student guides.

what if we pass all the value to the area of internships? Would it affect also some other areas like accommodaiton, etc or just the internships area? 
That is why we were wondering if passing some of the 301s to the home or similar...

What do you think aboutthis?

Thanks!

[evolvingSEO]

Hi Jose

If this is essentially the same site with the _same _content I would migrate all content and redirect all pages to their individual new pages right away. The old site is making money, but by pointing users at the new site, you'll make money at the new site right? No money lost.

If this is a 1:1 move - Domain A --> Domain B and all the content is basically the same, that's really the way to go. You'll make it harder in the long run for Google and users to understand what site is the correct one.

Did I understand that correctly, or is the move not so simple?

[Eurasmus.com]

Thank you for your answer.

About this:

• I agree with your strategy. You should point them to the most valuable pages on the new site, the ones that are the most closely related. As for bounce rate, yes it is important, but I don't believe it will devalue your 301 redirects.

For user experience, I am sure that we should just redirect to the internship section but the big question is: it will give tremendously value to our internship section, what about the others? Will those benefit as well or will remain totally the same?

Agree with second answer...

I hope I can get some more opinions and see what to do!

Thank you for your help!

[MonicaOConnor]

1. The new site includes more services, like accommodation, information...not only internships. Therefore, should we point the most relevant urls from our previous site to our home to share the value or just to the internships section? I am afraid that if the bounce rate goes higher from the 301 we could loose some value...

• I agree with your strategy. You should point them to the most valuable pages on the new site, the ones that are the most closely related. As for bounce rate, yes it is important, but I don't believe it will devalue your 301 redirects.

For question 2, I think you should use your discretion. I am not sure how easy it is to manage and maintain two sites. I always like to do everything at one time, just rip the bandaid off. But that is up to you in this case. If you are worried about conversions, I understand that. But what happens when someone clicks on a page for your old domain, then clicks a link in that domain that redirects them to a new site? That to me seems like a recipe for bad user experience.