Pausing a site - how to do this with minimum damage to SEO for period of pause
-
Hi - Have a site that needs to be paused due to the current global pandemic. Their production is about to go into shut down for 4 weeks (minimum), which means they wont be able to fulfil any online orders.
So what's the best way to pause the site, while minimising any long term impact to any SEO gains so far achieved?
- Banner / interstitial use informing of halted ordering
- Create a landing page on the site with long form content that the banner links to for customers to get more information about the temporary closure of site
- Removing add to cart, purchase and product pricing from product pages/site
Anything else that should be considered here? I've seen reference to application 503, but don't think this is a good idea. Any advice is appreciated.
-
That's a good idea - you could even display a banner ad that pops up anytime a user accesses the site "Shipping on all products delayed x weeks due to global pandemic". I think people would be pretty understanding.
-
Have you considered letting people order whatever they want but adding a big message saying that orders can be delayed up to 4 weeks? That way you will not lose traffic and users who can wait will do so.
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
-
How to carry across/capture linkjuice during an SEO site migration
Hi there - I am planning out an SEO migration but this thought just occured to me: If the links into a site's previous URL went to the non-canonical version of the domain name - e.g. to: https://theguardian.com/uk and not the correct version of that URL, which is: https://www.theguardian.com/uk Then, if I do a redirect simply from the correct canonical version of the domain:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart
https://www.theguardian.com/uk - rather than the versions of the domain that are being pointed to by backlinks - e.g. https://theguardian.com/uk - then the migration will not be carrying across all the linkjuice from the previous site. So how would you suggest dealing with this issue?0 -
Will changing category URLs on site hurt SEO?
Hi Moz Community, We're looking to replace some URLs on our Wordpress site and I want to make sure we won't hurt our SEO with the changes. The site is lushpalm.com When we originally launched our site we created pages (which are linked to in our main menu) to essentially display our categories. We did this as a workaround because we didn’t like the URL to have the word “category” in it. Now we would like to make some changes and we want to make sure we’re not going to hurt our SEO in any way by accidentally duplicating content or otherwise. We want to fix our structure and now link to our category pages from our main menu, BUT we want to change the URL of the category page so that it doesn’t have “category” in it, essentially renaming it the name of the page currently linked to in our main menu. So basically, the category lushpalm.com/category/surf-trips, would be renamed with the URL lushpalm.com/surf-trips and the current page that is at lushpalm.com/surf-trips would be therefore replaced. My questions are: If we did this, would that mean that the previous “lushpalm.com/category/surf-trips” would cease to exist? Or is there some imprint of that out on the web? And if it is then would it re-direct to the new page? Would replacing the current page URL with a category hurt our current SEO in any way? Would this change cause any duplicate pages somehow? Thanks so much for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TaraLP1 -
SEO implications of off-site secure Donation page
Hi Mozzers, I have a non-profit client that defends wildlife and public lands in the western US. The huge website is currently not responsive so we are working on that. In the meantime, we will be making the Action pages (such as Donations, Sign Petition, Get Newsletter) pages responsive. This will be housed under a new domain. My question is, what are SEO best practices for doing this? Does it negatively impact SEO to have a visitor "booted" from a site to a second secure site? Does Google know that the Donation site is in fact fulfillment and is linked to the original site? Also, what about domain implications? Is it best to have the name of the non-profit in the domain or sub, like this: https://saveanimals.secure.com/donate? Thanks everyone!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CalamityJane770 -
SEO Friendly Facets
Hi I'm still stuck on the subject if SEO friendly facets. Firstly, is it worth investing time in over things like SEO campaigns/content marketing as I'm the only one working on SEO and trying to prioritise all tasks 🙂 Can I set up facets so they are SEO friendly - should they simply be blocked? my concern is wasting crawl budget and duplicate pages. Here's an example of a page on the site - https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/lift-tables Here's an example of a facet URL - https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/lift-tables#facet:-1002779711011711697110,-700000000000001001651484832107103,-700000000000001057452564832109109&productBeginIndex:0&orderBy:5&pageView:list& What would be the best course of action to take to make them SEO friendly? Tips would be appreciated 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
My site is always in the top 4 on google, and sometimes goes to #2\. But the site at #1 is always at #1 .. how can i beat them?
So i'm sure this is a very generic question.. of course everyone wants to be #1. We are an ecommerce web site. We have all sorts of products, user ratings, and are loved by our customers. We sell over 3 million a year. So let me give you some data.. First of all one of the sites that keeps taking the #2 or #3 spot is amazons category for what we sell.. (i'm not sure if I should say who we are here.. as I don't want the #1 spot to realize we are trying to take them over!) Amazon of course has a domain authority of 100. But they never take the #1 spot. The other site that takes the #2 and #3 spot is not even selling anything. Happens to be a technical term's with the same name wikipedia page! (i wish google would figure out people aren't looking for that!) Anyways.. every day we bouce back and forth between #4 and #2.. but #1 never changes.. Here are the stats of us verse #1 from moz: #1: Page Authority: 56.8, Root Domains Linking to page: 158, Domain Authority: 54.6: root domains linking to the root domain 1.42k my site: Page Authority: 60.6, Root domains linking to the page: 562, Domain Authority: 52.8: root domains linking to the root domain: 1.03k So they beat us in domain authority SLIGHTLY and in root domains linking to the root domain. So SEO masters.. what do I do to fix this? Get better backlinks? But how.... I can't just email GQ and ask them to write about us can I? I'm open to all things.. Maybe i'm not using moz data correctly.. We should at least be #2. We get #2 every other day.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 88mph0 -
Mobile SEO
Hey, In the following article, Google recommended using a 301 redirect but doesn't specify why. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/making-websites-mobile-friendly.html I assume this is to pass over link equity to the relevant mobile/desktop variation. Can anyone confirm this? Also is there any other reason? Again assuming this would keep the correct URLs in the correct index? Anything else anyone can chip in would be great. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CraigAddyman0 -
What are the bing only SEO tactics?
Recently we realised that our client's SERPs were almost always lower on Bing.com and Bing (canada) when comparing with Google.com and Google.ca We want to know if there's different ranking or blocking factors for Bing and if someone had similar expriences. It would also be appreciated if you have releavent and trusted information on this topic, from blog posts, forums, etc. What are your thoughts on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RichardPicard0 -
Could Sub domains damage our SEO?
Hi there, We're currently looking into integrating a new internal search function to our site which will involve housing the search results on a sub domain of our site. We have no intention of these search result pages becoming landing pages for organic traffic but would the inclusion of a sub domain affect the optimization of the main domain? i.e. could it effect our authority? Nige
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NigelJ0