Type of redirect?
-
I'm almost ready to launch a website redesign. We are going to move what's currently being hosted on olddomain.com to newdomain.com. We want to do this early to avoid error and to have olddomain.com redirect to newdomain.com until the new content is ready.
Once the redesign is complete, we'll push the new content to olddomain.com (as it holds a higher SEO value) and take away the redirect.
A. Does this sound like a good idea?
B. What kind of redirect should I use? 302? 307?
Thanks, and sorry for the confusion
-
The 301 cancellation itself is immediate. It may take time for search engines to crawl your site and notice the change on any given page.
-
How long does it take to cancle the 301?
I had a 301, I just canceled it & uploaded my new content.
-
If you needed to proceed with your plan, then a 302 allows you to redirect traffic for a short period such as what you are describing. I would define "short" as being 7 days or less.
If you are going to move for 30 days or more, I would use a 301 redirect. Once the upgrade is complete, cancel the 301 and send your traffic back.
-
I get why you're confused -- it lies with the presence of our old site and the permissions we have to change content.
So we're not just taking the site down for maintenance upon completion -- we're pointing the domain to a different server (both domains will be pointing to different places). The main question for me is how to do this smoothly?
But, mostly I just needed confirmation that the developer's idea wasn't the best one and reading your responses has helped me understand this a bit better.
-
I am still a bit confused.
You are currently using olddomain.com. You wish to upgrade the site.
You have beta.olddomain.com. You perform your development work on beta.olddomain.com while your live site continues to receive traffic.
Upon completion of development you would take "olddomain.com" down for maintenance. You update the site with the changes from the beta site, then you re-open the site and are live.
The above method represents the stand process under which most sites are upgraded. What you are describing sounds more like what happens in the offline world. You own an office which needs to be remodeled. You then move to a temporary office because the construction workers require access to your old office to make the changes. That method is not required in the virtual world.
-
You're correct in the direction things need to go.
The point isn't to preserve link juice in 2 ways -- it's to maintain a domain that we've had for years and that has tons of links pointing to it.
Pretty confusing stuff if you ask me.
-
We want to use olddomain.com because we've had it for years, our customers know it, and we have tons of links pointing to it. We set up beta.olddomain.com for testing.
The only reason we even need newdomain.com is because our old site was mandated to us by the manufacturer and we need to keep it per their rules. We don't care about that site at all though -- we just need to transfer it at the same time that we get the new content onto the old domain, does that make sense?
-
I agree with Dan's approach.
It sounds like you want to use your current "olddomain.com" as your development area. That doesn't make sense to me. If you use your "newdomain.com" site for development, then when you are ready upgrade/switch your current domain with the newly re-designed content, you wont need to use any form of redirect. It's less work for you and search engines.
-
so your saying that:
beta.olddomain.com will go to: olddomain.com
existing content at olddomain.com will go to newdomain.comif that's correct it may be a bit over my head. perhaps someone else can chime in?
it sounds like you are trying to preserve link juice two ways, which i don't think you can do . perhaps a staggered launch that will allow the 301 to redirect the content, and then a relaunch via the beta content later (no 301s)?
-
Hi Dan, thanks for the response.
I agree that it sounds risky, that's why I posted here It was the route my developer suggested.
The site is being developed on a local server but we also have a subdomain set up (beta.olddomain.com). We'll be using the same domain, but the content that used to be there will be going to a new domain because it is a website that was mandated to us by our corporate manufacturer.
We have already planned to set up the 301 redirects from our old urls to the new ones. The main concern I have is the transfer of the new content to the old domain (from beta.olddomain.com to olddomain.com). Do you have any suggestions for a smooth transition in this regard?
-
hi Kyle,
all the domain forwarding sounds kind of dangerous to me.i've done a few site redesigns and can offer the following advice:
1.) if it ain't broke, don't move it.2.) if you can develop your new site via a local server, or a cheap host (set up a pw so only you can see it while you develop), i would do that. again, just moving domains seems risky.
301 redirects communicate to the search engines that you are permanently redirecting your content to your new site. you want to consider doing a 301 for ALL content/urls. this will help preserve rankings. a lot of times you can use a program like rewrite to handle this if you have tons of urls.
your best bet is to get all your "new" content ready to go, live, and then 301 redirect to it at your new domain. if that is happening on THE SAME domain (old content -> new content ; same domain), you want to 301 redirect your old url's to their equivalent new urls.
hope that helps! :>)
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
-
Index Page Redirect to Home Page? Best Practices...
Hi, I am wondering what the best practice is when a site has an index page and a home page? I have two pages, listed below, and want to know if I should 301 redirect my "index" page to my standard home page. The home page is where I would like all traffic to fall on for our website. Additionally, I used the rel=canonical tag years ago on the index page to indicate that the home page is the main content. Home Page - https://www.1099pro.com/ (PA 45) Home Page Canonical: rel="canonical" href="https://www.1099pro.com/"/> Index Page - https://www.1099pro.com/index.asp (PA - 33) Index Page Canonical: rel="canonical" href="https://www.1099pro.com/"/> It seems to me that there is some extra juice that could be passed to my home page (which is the page that ranks highly for our major keywords) by 301 redirecting the index page. Is there any reason why I should not do that? Really appreciate any help - especially with extra explanations - for the simple minded like me ;)! -Michael
Web Design | | Stew2220 -
What should I know about redirecting users based on cookies?
Hi Moz! My client wants to redirect users to a basic or professional version of their site based on cookies. What do we need to do/know to make sure implementation is SEO-friendly? What if a user has cookies turned off? Are there any other obstacles? Thanks for reading!
Web Design | | DA20130 -
WordPress and Redirects
I just converted my site to wordpress. Previously urls like www.waikoloavacationrentals.com/kolea-rentals/9g and www.waikoloavacationrentals.com/kolea-rentals/9g.html would go to the same page. Since using wordpress the first one will not work. I did not have redirects set up so was wondering if there is something I am forgetting to easily make it to where if someone types in both urls it will go to the same page.
Web Design | | RobDalton0 -
How to setup a redirect from one subfolder to another to avoid duplicate content.
Hello All, I have a WordPress site that Moz says has duplicate content. http://deltaforcepi.com/latest-news/page/3
Web Design | | Michael_Rock
http://deltaforcepi.com/category/latest-news/page/3 So I set up an addition to the .htaccess file . . . redirect code to move from one folder to another RewriteRule ^category/latest-news/(.*)$ /latest-news/$1 [R=301,NC,L] What did I do wrong? I am not proficient in .htaccess files.0 -
Is it better to redirect a url or set up a landing page for a new site?
Hi, One of our clients has got a new website but is still getting quite a lot of traffic to her old site which has a page authority of 30 on the home page and has about 20 external backlinks. It's on a different hosting package so a different C block but I was wondering if anyone could advise if it would be better to simply redirect this page to the new site or set up a landing page on this domain simply saying "Site has moved, you can now find us here..." sort of idea. Any advice would be much appreciated Thanks
Web Design | | Will_Craig0 -
Redirect From .aspx to .html if already indexed - Website Redesign
Hi Guys I would like to know if somebody could possibly shed some light on this for me. We are in the process of re-designing our site, but we are keeping all of our content in terms of site structure, internal linking etc. the same. Now we were wondering if it would be a SEO best practice for us to change our pages' extension from .aspx to .html and just put a re-direct from the aspx to the html pages. Or should we keep everything as is, and maybe just revise our on-page seo efforts as well as do some more link-building. I just have to note that we are currently ranking very well for top positions and obviously all these pages are already nicely indexed. And then another question I have is with regards to our mobi site of this same website.Our dev team created it using Responsive Web Design, but they decided to implement techniques that show and hide content based on what device you are viewing it on. So when viewing it on your desktop, it will show content as per normal, but when viewing it on a mobile device it will hide this content and show the content formatted for that specific mobile device. So we are obviously sitting with a case of dup content here.Is this technique acceptable, or is there a workaround/different way of implementing this? Thanks In Advance Dave
Web Design | | DavidZA10 -
Unable to set preferred domain, can I verify a site that's already redirected?
I'm in the process of trying to set a preferred domain in webmaster tools -- to set our www version as preferred vs. the non www. version. IT is already redirecting non-www to www, but I get this message when trying to change settings "Part of the process of setting a preferred domain is to verify that you own http://mnn.com/. Please verify http://mnn.com/." While we own the domain, I am not sure how we can have Google access a file at [http://mnn.com/some_file when we are forwarding all requests for non-www to our www site.
Web Design | | Aggie
Note: The apache rewrite predates me and I'm not sure how / why we have two domains set up, but I'm trying to fix the preferred domain now.Am I able to verify the non version once the redirect is in place.Any ideas??? Help???Thanks!Lisa0 -
For a varied product type or keywords group is it best to have several sites?
Hello everyone... Question: I have 7-8 generic keywords that I would like to rank for, is it possible for one site to rank highly for all these different keywords, or would this be best achieved by making 2 or 3 websites in total targeting different keywords (product sectors)? More info: We are in a niche industry & would like to know if it would be beneficial to have several websites made for specific product types rather than one main site? Although these sub classifications of products are nice, they are competitive as they have a high search volume Would it be better to build specific websites that only do that one type of product and have related keyword in domain, content & blogs on the site to that effect to increase relevance and positions as a result? Thanks
Web Design | | Ray_UK0