How can we minimize the SEO impact during a major platform migration?
-
We are preparing for a major platform migration with an ecommerce client. The website is in the range of 7000 pages. During this migration, all URLs will change due to differences in the platform and improvements to the site structure. Unfortunately, they run on a Microsoft server, so doing 301 redirects also tends to be a painful process.
What can we do to minimize the initial dent this puts in the website traffic?
We are
- prepared to submit XML sitemaps to Google and Bing as soon as the new site is live.
- writing 301 redirects for all pages which have inbound links (this is tough to automate due to the URL structures).
In the long run, we expect the new platform, URL structure, and site architecture to be a huge improvement for our organic rankings. The client and we are worried about the transition period though!
Any tips or advice to help us through it?
Thanks!
-
Hey thanks. is there some tool or feature in google webmaster account that shows us info about the caching frequency?
also, we only set up 301's for 400 of the 8,000 urls. only those 400 hand external links to them. it would be a massive project to redirect all those other 7,600 urls. do we need to do that?
-
The steps you are taking and the answers above are pretty much spot on.
The only thing not said here which will be worth doing is getting in contact with important webmasters who link to you and getting them to change the links to the new URL. Depending on how many links you have and their value I would not necessarily do this for all links, but definitely the powerful, important ones and the easy ones i.e. Social profiles you may have created.
Something else which maybe interesting to try is getting some quick social signals out to your important URLs once they go live. Tweets etc.. just something to think about.
-
I've been through this a few times, and as per Maximise, make sure those 301 permanent redirects are 1.) correct and 2.) in place. That will make the whole process 100% easier.
Be prepared for some bumps. If your site gets cached everyday you will work through them faster than if it only gets cached every 5 days - 2 weeks. Your less relevant pages may take a little longer to get re-indexed. BUT, seeing as how you have set up 301's you should be fine!
Dan
-
If done carefully you may not see much (or any) drop in traffic. I've recently restructured the entire URL structure of a website and saw no drop in traffic or rankings. This was also on a Microsoft Server and I used this software for the URL rewriting - http://www.isapirewrite.com/
As long as all your 301 redirects are configured correctly (test thoroughly in your test environment before going live) the transition from the old URL's to the new URL's should be pretty seemless. It would be a good idea to submit a new sitemap shortly after the changes have been made to let the search engines know what your doing.
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
-
Audit my SEO Project
Hey professionals, I works on "MyInfo Community" as a SEO worker, anyone can help me to audit my this project? Because i am newbie in this field. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smartpoedgr0 -
Looking for an SEO Mentor
I do in-house marketing for a medium sized luxury architectural design firm. I have a good understanding of the moz platform and general SEO but would like to findsomeone to provide regular guidance and answer some specific questions regarding our SEO. Specifically, we want advising on keywords, blog content, and link building. Ideally we'd like to engage a consultant (remotely) on an hourly basis. We'v have had very poor experiences with big SEO firms so that’s definitely not something we’re looking for. Best,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WorkshopAPD
Caio0 -
SEO Value of Google+?
Hi Mozers, Does having a Google+ page really impact SEO? Thanks, Yael
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yaelslater1 -
SEO on dynamic website
Hi. I am hoping you can advise. I have a client in one of my training groups and their site is a golf booking engine where all pages are dynamically created based on parameters used in their website search. They want to know what is the best thing to do for SEO. They have some landing pages that Google can see but there is only a small bit of text at the top and the rest of the page is dynamically created. I have advised that they should create landing pages for each of their locations and clubs and use canonicals to handle what Google indexes.Is this the right advice or should they noindex? Thanks S
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bedynamic0 -
Can I use duplicate content in different US cities without hurting SEO?
So, I have major concerns with this plan. My company has hundreds of facilities located all over the country. Each facility has it's own website. We have a third party company working to build a content strategy for us. What they came up with is to create a bank of content specific to each service line. If/when any facility offers that service, they then upload the content for that service line to that facility website. So in theory, you might have 10-12 websites all in different cities, with the same content for a service. They claim "Google is smart, it knows its content all from the same company, and because it's in different local markets, it will still rank." My contention is that duplicate content is duplicate content, and unless it is "localize" it, Google is going to prioritize one page of it and the rest will get very little exposure in the rankings no matter where you are. I could be wrong, but I want to be sure we aren't shooting ourselves in the foot with this strategy, because it is a major major undertaking and too important to go off in the wrong direction. SEO Experts, your help is genuinely appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MJTrevens1 -
Dealing with 404s during site migration
Hi everyone - What is the best way to deal with 404s on an old site when you're migrating to a new website? Thanks, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
SEO Impact of High Volume Vertical and Horizontal Internal Linking
Hello Everyone - I maintain a site with over a million distinct pages of content. Each piece of content can be thought of like a node in graph database or an entity. While there is a bit of natural hierarchy, every single entity can be related to one or more other entities. The conceptual structure of the entities like so: Agency - A top level business unit ( ~100 pages/urls) Office - A lower level business unit, part of an Agency ( ~5,000 pages/urls) Person - Someone who works in one or more Offices ( ~80,000 pages/urls) Project - A thing one or more People is managing ( ~750,000 pages/urls) Vendor - A company that is working on one or more Projects ( ~250,000 pages/urls) Category - A descriptive entity, defining one or more Projects ( ~1,000 pages/urls) Each of these six entities has a unique (url) and content. For each page/url, there are internal links to each of the related entity pages. For example, if a user is looking at a Project page/url, there will be an internal link to one or more Agencies, Offices, People, Vendors, and Categories. Also, a Project will have links to similar Projects. This same theory holds true for all other entities as well. People pages link to their related Agencies, Offices, Projects, Vendors, etc, etc. If you start to do the math, there are tons of internal links leading to pages with tons of internal links leading to pages with tons of internal links. While our users enjoy the ability to navigate this world according to these relationships, I am curious if we should force a more strict hierarchy for SEO purposes. Essentially, does it make sense to "nofollow" all of the horizontal internal links for a given entity page/url? For search engine indexing purposes, we have legit sitemaps that give a simple vertical hierarchy...but I am curious if all of this internal linking should be hidden via nofollow...? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jhariani2 -
Exit Popups Impact On SEO
Hi looking for any research on the impact of using exit popups (when a visitor is exiting the site), and the impact on it from SEO perspective. Regards, Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MBASydney0