Process to move blog from subdomain on Wordpress, to subfolder on BigCommerce store
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Hi
Having weighed up all the angles, it's time to bite the bullet and move our blog from a subdomain to a subfolder on our ecommerce store. But as someone new to SEO I am struggling to find the correct process for doing this properly for our situation. Can anyone help?
I have outlined what I have learned so far in 10 steps below to hopefully help you understand my situation, where I am at and what I am struggling with. Advice, tips and suggested further reading on all/any of the 10 points would be great.
Some quick background
The blog is on Wordpress, and on a subdomain of our store (blog.store.com). It is four years old, with 80 original posts we want to move to a subfolder of the store (store.com/blog).
The store has been built using BigCommerce, and has also been active for four years.
Both the blog and the store exist as properties within our Google Search Console.
The 10 steps required for the move, based on research so far, and the associated questions
1 Prepare new site: which I am guessing means reproducing all of the content over at the new subfolder location (store.com/blog)?
2 Setup errors for any pages not being transferred: I have no idea how to do this!
3 Make sure analytics is working for the new pages: it should be as the both the site the pages are moving to a subfolder of is already running with analytics and has been for years - is this a safe assumption?
4 Map all URLs being moved to their new counterparts: is this just record keeping? In a spreadsheet? Or is it a process I don't yet understand??
5 Add rel='cannonical' tags: while I understand the concept of these, I have no idea how to implement them properly here!
6 Create and save new sitemaps: as both the blog.store.com and store.com exist in Google Search Console already, can I just refresh the sitemap for store.com/blog once the subfolder is created to achive this?
7 Setup and test 301 redirects: these can be created in BigCommerce for the new pages in the store.com/blog subfolder, and will refer back to the blog.store.com URLs the pages came from - is this the right way to do this? I am still learning here and know enough to know how much this can matter, but not enough to fully grasp the intricacies of the process
8 Move URLs simultaneously: I have no idea what this means or how to achieve it! is this just for big site moves? Does it still apply to 80 blog posts shifting from a subdomain to a subfolder on the same root? If so, how?
9 Submit a change of address in Google Search Console: This looks simple enough although Google ominously warn:
‘Don't use this tool unless you are moving your primary website presence to a new address’
Which makes me wonder how simple it really is - my primary website in this case is the store, which is not moving. address But does 'primary' here simply mean the individual property with search console? I am going in circles on this one!
10 Configure the old blog on the subdomain to redirect people and engines to the new pages: I thought the 301 redirects and rel='cannonical' stuff did that already? What did I miss??
For anyone still here, thanks for making it this far and if you still have the energy left, any advice would be great!
Thanks
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