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
-
My Website's Home Page is Missing on Google SERP
Hi All, I have a WordPress website which has about 10-12 pages in total. When I search for the brand name on Google Search, the home page URL isn't appearing on the result pages while the rest of the pages are appearing. There're no issues with the canonicalization or meta titles/descriptions as such. What could possibly the reason behind this aberration? Looking forward to your advice! Cheers
Technical SEO | | ugorayan0 -
Measuring the size of a competitors website?
I think our website is too big, far too many indexed pages. I'd like to do some research on how big our competitors' websites are (how many indexed pages). Is there a way to do this? Cheers, Rhys
Technical SEO | | SwanseaMedicine0 -
Problem with Yoast not seeing any of this website's text/content
Hi, My client has a new WordPress site http://www.londonavsolutions.co.uk/ and they have installed the Yoast Premium SEO plug-in. They are having issues with getting the lights to go green and the main problem is that on most pages Yoast does not see any words/content – although there are plenty of words on the pages. Other tools can see the words, however Yoast is struggling to find any and gives the following message:- Bad SEO score. The text contains 0 words. This is far below the recommended minimum of 300 words. Add more content that is relevant for the topic. Readability - You have far too little content. Please add some content to enable a good analysis. They have contacted the website developer who says that there is nothing wrong, but they are frustrated that they cannot use the Yoast tools themselves because of this issue, plus Yoast are offering no support with the issue. I hope that one of you guys has seen this problem before, or can spot a problem with the way the site has been built and can perhaps shed some light on the problem. I didn't build the site myself so won't be offended if you spot problems with it. Thanks in advance, Ben
Technical SEO | | bendyman0 -
Reverify website
Hello, I want to disavow some really dodgy links and although the website is verifed since we see a meta tag in the source code, we no longer have the login details for the email address used to verify it so can't access the tools console. So how do I upload a disavow file (the links i got were from Ahref and Moz analysis)? Should I reverify the website using a new email address and upload a new meta tag? Is there a problem with doing this? Sorry if this is obvious!
Technical SEO | | AL123al0 -
Google how deal with licensed content when this placed on vendor & client's website too. Will Google penalize the client's site for this ?
One of my client bought licensed content from top vendor of Health Industry. This same content is on the vendor's website & my client's site also but on my site there is a link back to vendor is placed which clearly tells to anyone that this is a licensed content & we bought from this vendor. My client bought paid top quality content for best source of industry but at this same this is placed on vendor's website also. Will Google penalize my client's website for this ? Niche is HEALTH
Technical SEO | | sourabhrana1 -
Would adding an SSL certificate help my website?
SSL certificates can obviously be a used as a ranking factor by Google, but would a site with no need for an SSL certificate notice a gain by adding one? Is it possible to demonstrate you have an SSL certificate without having some https pages on your site?
Technical SEO | | sthompson0 -
Including videos on an eCommerce website.
Hi,
Technical SEO | | ChrisHolgate
We're about to start integrating video content on our eCommerece site in order to bolster the quantity and diversity of useful content that each page presents a potential customer. We’re talking product reviews, information relating to the differences between different products and company information. From an SEO perspective it has been suggested that Google will like this however I have a question regarding the actual method of integration. Usually I would just insert some embed code linking to the correct video on our YouTube channel however I’m really conscious that a search engine will just see the embed code, notice the page loads slightly slower and not really gain anything useful from the video file. I’m assuming that this isn’t the case but I have several questions: - Would you host on YouTube and simply insert the embed code in to the page. Would any alternative site (or even self-hosted) be preferable? - Should I be padding out either side of the embed code with a description of the video and an annotation on OUR site? - Does Google actually look at the link and ascertain the relevance of the video file to the actual page? If it does this does it gain anything useful that could help on-page SEO? These are probably all pretty basic questions for which I do apologise but I want to make sure that before spending a sizable amount of time on this that we start off with a correct integration! Many thanks0 -
Should I worry about these 404's?
Just wondering what the thought was on this. We have a site that lets people generate user profiles and once they delete the profile the page then 404's. I was told there is nothing we can do about those from our developers, but I was wondering if I should worry about these...I don't think they will affect any of our rankings, but you never know so I thought I would ask. Thanks
Technical SEO | | KateGMaker1