Moving site to new domain without access to redirect from old to new. How can I do this with as little loss to SERP results as possible?
-
I've been hired to build a new site for a customer. They were duped by some shady characters at goglupe.com (If you can reach them, tell them they are rats--phone is disconnected, address is a comedy club on Mission in SF). Glupe owns the domain name and would not transfer or give FTP access prior to dropping off the face of the earth. The customer doesn't want to chase after them with lawyers, so we are moving on. New domain, new site with much of the same content as previous site.
All that I have access to is the old wordpress site. I plan to build the new site, then remove all pages/posts from the old site. Is there anything I can do to salvage the current page 1 ranking? Obviously, the new domain will take some time to get back there. Just hoping to avoid any pitfalls or penalties if I can.
If I had complete access, I would follow all the standard guidelines. But I don't. Any thoughts?
Thanks!
Chris
-
New wrinkle. I added the redirects to the original site (robinsonsllc.net). Pages are redirecting just fine to new site (ababilling.net).
However, I get redirected when I try to login to robinsonsllc.net/wp-admin.
I didn't add any wildcards, and I certainly didn't redirect the wp-admin. I have no way to get back into the original site now.
Any ideas?
-
Glad to know that this may not be near as bad as expected. Obviously this is not an ideal situation. The big lesson learned by these folks, take care of your domain!
-
Yoast will be able to handle it, though you might need to upgrade to premium for the plugin.
There are many other capable redirect plugins for WP which should do the trick too.
-
Yoast SEO plugin will do it.
-
Sorry, not duped as in duplicated content. Duped as in that company took their money and ran.
I can set up redirects for each page/post? Do I need a plugin for that? I don't have access to the htaccess file.
-
If you have access to the old live WordPress site then you can set up redirects in there from old posts to new, relevant posts on the new site.
What content was actually duped? I barely see any content at all on goglupe.
-
Correct. Site is still live.
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
-
Urgent help needed for site move with major ranking loss
URGENT HELP/ADVICE NEEDED I am so stressed and worried about my website domain change. I desperately need advice as soon as possible. I will try my best to keep this as brief as possible. I have owned and operated my punk clothing business online at the URL toofastonline.com for 15 years now. And for a long long time we ranked #1 for punk clothing on Google & life was good. However, thanks to the arrival of several cheap marketplaces and other unanticipated changes our ranking dropped considerably. The last few years have been extremely hard on us, to say the least, we came really close to losing the business altogether. But finally after lots of hard work & long hours, things started to improve. Ranking went back up, and we were busy again. I had been toying with the idea of buying the domain TooFast.com for about 10 years, but I never had the money to do it until this now, so I made the leap and as of Jan 9, toofastonline.com became toofast.com. Unfortunately, I now know that I set up the domain change hastily, without doing any of the pre-work Google suggests to do. I didn’t know it then but I did it wrong. And our site which wasranking #7 for punk clothing on Jan. 8th is now number 51 and today is only Jan 24th! I AM PANICKING. I have looked for help, posting jobs on Shopify Experts site several times now, opening accounts with MOZ and SEM Rush, spending countless hours on the phone with GoDaddy, Shopify and even long chats with Google. I have spent all day everyday for the past two weeks trying fix everything to no avail. No one can start on my site issues fast enough. And I have been given so much wrong information that I feel like I have done irreparable damage. I was (am) not qualified to make this kind of a site change alone. Too much was done too fast and without any real working knowledge Google SEO. My brother was the SEO guy and since he left the business I have just been struggling along with it, just trying to keep my head above water. So now for the big question: Should I temporarily change my Shopify stores domain back to toofastonline.com? This way I couldstart at the beginning, fix all the 404 redirects, fix the 301 redirects, clean up code, get the site in top working condition, and then, as Google suggests in theirGoogle Search Console Change of Address Toolstart to do the change of address in small sections, I can not afford to make any more reckless decisions. I have started and stopped, updated, fixed, changed and tried to fix again too many times now. I dont want Google to think I am trying something shady.. I’m not, I just don’t know what I’m doing, and I need help. Here is as much info as I can think of, I am more than willing to pay for help or do the work myself, as long as what I am doing is the right thing. Any and all help/advice/offers are welcome! Maureen CONTACT DETAILS: NAME: Maureen Keough, Owner EM:<a style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">Maureen@TooFast.com</a> PH: 856-599-1675 (W) DETAILS OF OUR SET-UP THE APPS & SERVICES WE USE: Google Admin / G-Suite User Gmail for emails Godaddy holds our domains Shopify hosts our storefront. My Shopify store was located at TooFastOnline.com for about 5 years Our Domain Changed From toofastonline.com to toofast.com on Jan 9 In Godaddy both toofastonline.com is being forwarded to toofast.com In Shopify I added toofast.com, made it my primary domain, but left toofastonline.com in there but it is just redirecting to toofast.com. STEPS TAKEN TO CHANGE | ADD | VERIFY THE NEW DOMAIN GoDaddy DNS Records Both Sites - Updated Pointing to Shopify’s IP Address GoDaddy Subdomains For TooFastOnline.com - Redirected But Causing SSL/HTTPS/Privacy errors GoDaddy Subdomains For TooFast.com - Added But Causing SSL/HTTPS/Privacy errors Google Admin - Updated Gmail MX Records TooFast - Added and Updated Gmail MX Records TooFastOnline - Unchanged Google Merchant Center - Updated TooFastOnline is now TooFast Google Merchant Product Feed- Updated TooFastOnline is now TooFast Google Ads - Finally got the New Feed Approved and It is Working Google Search Console - Updated I Think Sitemaps - Added and Asked To Crawl Google Analytics Added TooFast As A Property Seems To Be Working Google Analytics Tag Updated in Shopify Admin Google Search Console - Requested to Move TooFastOnline.com to TooFast.com, still not done. No Redirects were made prior to the “Move” All Social Media Channels Links were Updated By Us Mailerlite MX Records For Bulk Emails - Updated/Verified
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TooFast130 -
Is an iframe redirect on the same Domain bad for SEO
Good morning. We have a vendor that has created a landing page with content that we want to use. Because of the way we built the site, the only way to use the content is to create an i-frame. The i-frame is re-directingon the same Domain. Would we benefit from the SEO Content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jdenbo_edf0 -
301 redirect to search results page?
Hi - we just launched our redesigned website. On the previous site, we had multiple .html pages that contained links to supporting pdf documentation. On this new site, we no longer have those .html landing pages containing the links. The question came up, should we do a search on our site to gather a single link that contains all pdf links from the previous site, and set up a redirect? It's my understanding that you wouldn't want google to index a search results page on your website. Example: old site had the link http://www.oldsite.com/technical-documents.html new site, to see those same links would be like: http://www.newsite.com/resources/search?View+Results=&f[]=categories%3A196
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jenny10 -
Can new domain extensions rank?
Hi Does anybody know if it's possible to get domains with extensions like .party or .world to rank? Even for high competitive keywords? Can they rank over .com?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MikeWU0 -
Improvement in rankings then site dissapears from SERPS?
Yesterday I saw significant improvements in rankings and the first page resulapp for several keywords appeared to have changed and included my site. Today the results appear to have reverted back and my site is nowhere to be seen. At least before I was in the top 100 but now I'm nowhere?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
Can I compete with these results? (Brand in Serp)
Hey, One quick question. Lets say im fighting for keyword "british airways" and i want to appear straight after first result in number 2 position. Is it possible to compete with stroked results. (See image attached) Thanks Stxct.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Marteen0 -
Move to a new domain - How to get the redirects right?
Hi, I hope that someone with good htaccess knowledge can help. I am planning on moving my site to a new domain. I understand that I should make 301 redirects using htaccess for every URL. This is a big site so it will be impossible to not forget some of the thousands existing URLs. Now to the question: How do I make all the URLs that is not specified in htaccess to redirect to my new root? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrlolalot0 -
How can I create a redirection on IIS?
Hi, I want to know how to create a server side 301 redirection on IIS7. I found on google the below details; IIS Redirect In internet services manager, right click on the file or folder you wish to redirect Select the radio titled "a redirection to a URL". Enter the redirection page Check "The exact url entered above" and the "A permanent redirection for this resource" Click on 'Apply' But couldn't find anything like that. Can anyone help me out. thanks & regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VipinLouka780