How do you 'close down' a website?
-
Hello all,
If a company acquires a smaller company and 'absorbs' its products and services into its own website, what is the protocol with closing down the smaller company's site?
So far we added our branding to the site alerting their visitors to the imminent takeover, and 301 redirected certain pages - soon we'll be redirecting all the pages to their counterparts on the main website.
Once that's done, should we noindex the old site? Anything else?
Thanks, Caro
-
Great thanks, that sounds like a plan.
-
No, it isn't necessary to noindex the pages if you add canonical tags or when you redirect them. Once you point the old domain to the main domain and set up any manual redirects, the old pages are irrelevant. You can go ahead and remove the website files from the server and close the hosting account (if applicable). Just make sure you keep the domain renewed and pointed to the new site.
Eventually, Google will update their index based on your 301-redirects.
-
Thank you Laura, that's very helpful. Would you also suggest noindexing the old site once we're done?
-
If you haven't done so already, perform an audit of the old site's backlink profile. You don't want to inherit any risky backlinks when you create the redirects. A backlink audit will also help you find any old URLs on the site that also need to be redirected to pass on the link equity to your site.
If you aren't ready to redirect the pages yet because you don't want customers to be blindsided by the switch, you can use canonical tags to canonicalize each page to the counterpart on the main website. That way, users will see the old page, but Google will begin to associate the old site with the new (and the old brand with the new brand). I've done this before when rebranding a business and moving it from one website to another, and it worked beautifully.
Once you are ready to redirect all the pages to their counterparts on the main website, you can point the old domain to the main domain so any URLs automatically redirect to your domain. Set up a custom 404 page with useful navigation and maybe a search feature to help visitors find what they need. Keep an eye on your server logs and Google Search Console for any 404s so that you can redirect any pages that haven't already been redirected to the appropriate pages.
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
-
Huge uptick in 404s on new website
I just launched a new website, and I see that the 404s shot up hugely in Google Webmaster Tools right during the launch. We went from Drupal to WordPress, but I was wondering if anyone has any thoughts on whether these 404s represent a crisis, or potentially something harmless? There has been no noticeable SEO downtick in terms of keywords or queries during the same period... Thanks for any thoughts. Screenshot-2015-05-19-13.58.55.png
Technical SEO | | yoursearchteam0 -
301ing 404's
Hey guys, I am currently in the process of redirecting some of my 404 pages to pages like my home page. Before I do that, I am assessing the link value of the 404 pages. My question is what do you do with the 404 pages which appear to have low quality links, do you really want to redirect them to an important page on your site? What should I do with these 404 pages? CheersAdam
Technical SEO | | Adamshowbiz0 -
I'm receiving this message...
It's saying Roger can't communicate with my site. I've contacted ipage which is the host and they say it's on your end. Please let me know if you need any more info. from me... Thanks, Tom 404-447-2868
Technical SEO | | NextlevelMD0 -
My Website Ranking is terribly drop
So sorry I really need your all help 😞 I'm really frustrated and stressed. For my website http://www.cma-academy.edu.sg , it has been ranking on Google 1st page (with the keywords "design course/design courses") for the past over 6 months and the traffic was really good... But it has been almost 2 months since the big drop... my ranking all is gone in just a week and now it's even not on the top 50.. While my competitors websites are stand stil. 😞 I seriously really want to cry because of this.. And I'm sure there is nothing much wrong with my SEO to be abandoned by Google like this and Google still index my webpage, but the crawling rate is so much slow than before.. I really need some help from the expert, especially from seomoz.. Please help me in this, I'm willing to answer any questions as well...
Technical SEO | | AngieDang0 -
Webmaster tools lists a large number (hundreds)of different domains linking to my website, but only a few are reported on SEOMoz. Please explain what's going on?
Google's webmaster tools lists hundreds of links to my site, but SEOMoz only reports a few of them. I don't understand why that would be. Can anybody explain it to me? Is there someplace to I can go to alert SEOMoz to this issue?
Technical SEO | | dnfealkoff0 -
Websites on same c class IP address
If two websites are on the same c class IP address, what does it mean ? Does two websites belong to the same company ?
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
New website with slightly new urls
Hi we recently designed our website in work and changed some of the urls. the old site used to be http://www.example.ie/contact-us.htm now it's is http://example.ie/get-in-touch The problem we are having is with sitelinks (the ones auto generate in the serp) ie: about, contact us, team etc etc. Once cliked on, these OLD links are all going to 404 pages because of the change of url. Help with this would be greatly appreciated - I was thinking of blocking these old sitelinks in google web master.
Technical SEO | | GlenBOB0 -
Google crawl index issue with our website...
Hey there. We've run into a mystifying issue with Google's crawl index of one of our sites. When we do a "site:www.burlingtonmortgage.biz" search in Google, we're seeing lots of 404 Errors on pages that don't exist on our site or seemingly on the remote server. In the search results, Google is showing nonsensical folders off the root domain and then the actual page is within that non-existent folder. An example: Google shows this in its index of the site (as a 404 Error page): www.burlingtonmortgage.biz/MQnjO/idaho-mortgage-rates.asp The actual page on the site is: www.burlingtonmortgage.biz/idaho-mortgage-rates.asp Google is showing the folder MQnjO that doesn't exist anywhere on the remote. Other pages they are showing have different folder names that are just as wacky. We called our hosting company who said the problem isn't coming from them... Has anyone had something like this happen to them? Thanks so much for your insight!
Technical SEO | | ILM_Marketing
Megan0