Maintaining link value during site downtime
-
We are nearly finished rebuilding a client website, but they want to have a "dark launch" period for 4 days prior to the public site launch. During that 4-day period, we will be converting their server, so they want to take down the old site and instead send users a "coming soon" message. Although we have the old site pages set up to 301 for the public launch, I'm concerned that this dark period is going to hurt the link value on the old site pages. During this 4-day period, should we be setting a 503 status code on the old site that automatically serves the "coming soon" message? Or, should all old site pages be temporarily redirected to the "coming soon" landing page? Any other recommendations are appreciated as well.
-
Your last idea about temporarily redirecting them would be the best way to handle this situation. 302 redirects will send the right signals to search engines, and they'll know to come back later and check on them again.
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
-
Broken URL Links
Hi everyone, I have a question regarding broken URL links on my website. Late last year I move my site from an old platform to Shopify, and now have broken URL links giving out 4xx errors. When I look at Moz Pro>Campaigns>Insights>links, I can see the top broken URL links, however there is a difference if copy & paste URL directly from Moz Pro and by Export CSV file. For example below, If I copy and paste links direct from Moz Pro, it has the “http://” in front as below: http://www.thehairhub.com.au/WebRoot/ecshared01/Shops/thehairhub/57F3/1D8F/D244/C675/E27D/AC10/003F/35AD/manic-panic-colours.jpg But when I export the list of links as an CSV file, the http:// is removed. www.thehairhub.com.au/WebRoot/ecshared01/Shops/thehairhub/57F3/1D8F/D244/C675/E27D/AC10/003F/35AD/manic-panic-colours.jpg Another Example below: By copy & paste URL direct from Moz Pro
Technical SEO | | johnwall
http://thehairhub.com.au/Shop-Brands/Vitafive-CPR/CPR-Rescue By export CSV file.
thehairhub.com.au/Shop-Brands/Vitafive-CPR/CPR-Rescue Which one do I use to enter into the “Redirect From” field in Shopify URL Redirects? Do I need to have the http:// in front of the URL? Or is it not required for redirects to work? Kind Regards, John Wall
The Hair Hub0 -
Site Navigation
Hello, I have some questions about best practices with site navigation & internal linking. I'm currently assisting aplossoftware.com with its navigation. The site has about 200 pages total. They currently have a very sparse header with a lot of links in the footer. The three most important keywords they want to rank for are nonprofit accounting software, church accounting software and file 990 online. 1. What are your thoughts about including a drop down menu in the header for the different products? (they have 3 main products). This would allow us to include a few more links in the header and give more real estate to include full keywords in anchor text. 2. They have a good blog with content that gets regularly updated. Currently it's linked in the footer and gets a tiny amount of visits. What are your thoughts about including it as a link in the header instead? 3. What are best practices with using (or not using) no follow with site navigation and footer links? How about with links to social media pages like Facebook/Twitter? Any other thoughts/ideas about the site navigation for this site (www.aplossoftware.com) would be much appreciated. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | stageagent0 -
Link profile
Hi All, I am doing a link profile audit I have few questions 1. Should i stop worrying about backlinks that i once had and now the websites is down or page is 404 2. The link is nofollow Also i have 60% of my site links few root link and many articles/blogs links pasted in sites without any anchor text, should i worry about them? Thanks
Technical SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Does it matter if I leave image links pointing to old site when I move a wordpress blog?
Hi everyone I am moving a blog from one site to another. I have all the 301 redirects etc under control, but my question has to do with image links in the blogs. The image links all point over to the old site once the posts are copied over. Is this a major problem from an SEO perspective? Lots of links pointing out to an old site? It won't matter from the users perspective as I have 'none' for the image URL, so the user will never know. I will reload all the images if necessary but boy that will be a lot of work. Or is there a shortcut? Thanks very much Wendy
Technical SEO | | Chammy0 -
Too Many Internal Links?
Hi Guys, I'm completing a overhawl of our website at the moment have a certain penguin killed our site for our main keyword. I'm currently working on our internal linking as most of our blog posts have a link back to our home page with the main money keyword. At present we have 3,331 internal links and our site has only 1,000 pages. Can you get penalised for having too many internal links with exact match anchors. Thanks, Scott
Technical SEO | | ScottBaxterWW0 -
If I get a natural link for a great site and I have my keyword with anchor text in this link, how should I proceed?
If I get a natural link for a great site and I have my keyword with anchor text in this link, how should I proceed? I need to contact the site and ask to remove the link or request the removal of the anchor text and leave only the site URL? Or yet do not I need to worry about this issue?
Technical SEO | | soulmktpro0 -
Old massive site, should I nofollow all out going links?
The company I work for is in the process of rebuilding our entire website profile. Our biggest site, FrenchQuarter.com ranks pretty well for our main term "French Quarter Hotels" And we use that to drive business directly to our hotel businesses. The site is very old and one I inherited, rebuilding it won't be a priority for another 9 months or so. This site act's as a bit of a directory for the city. There are links everywhere and it's probably passing link juice to a lot of businesses scott free. In the mean time would it benefit or hurt us if I went through and no-followed most of the links? Would nofollowing links help frenchquarter.com to rank any better than it does? And could I then direct some of that link juice directly at our hotel websites to boost those as well? My goal is to get our hotel websites to rank 1st page, we get exposure in the locations pack, for 2 of our 5 hotels, but placing below that is impossible with all the competition from the OTA's (expecia, bookit.com, etc) Seems near impossible no matter what my backlink profile looks like. Thanks for any feedback, Cyril
Technical SEO | | Nola5041
