Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
301 Redirects After Company Acquisition
-
We recently acquired a company, and now we are going to redirect all of the pages on their site to their respective pages on our site. Do we need to keep the original pages on their site active? For how long?
Ideally, we would like to redirect everything and remove the old site entirely so we don't have to pay to keep hosting it. Is this possible?
Thanks!
-
Ideally, we would like to redirect everything and remove the old site entirely so we don't have to pay to keep hosting it. Is this possible?
Be sure that you don't save ten bucks on hosting but toss away thousand in content and the value of a redirect.
I would sniff the entire site for gems of content. Anything that is better than what you currently have or supplemental to it. If you can get new pages on your site that target keywords that have been off of your radar that could be a huge win.
Now... just saying what I do rather than disagree with others.... I keep an .htaccess file on that old domain for a long time - meaning forever.... you can do that inexpensively by getting a hosting service that will allow you to place multiple domains in different folders of a single account and redirect them. Since I don't know exactly how long it will take for search engines to permanently remember I make it impossible for them to miss.
-
Hi pbhatt,
I agree with Ryan on this one. I would recommend using a combination one of the following tools to keep an eye on any broken links or 404 pages on the new site:
- Xenu Link Sleuth
- Screaming Frog
- Google Webmaster Tools
- SEO Moz crawler tool
Hope this helps
-
Once the redirect is in place and you have confirmed it is working, you can immediately remove the old site.
I would highly recommend monitoring your sites on a daily basis for 404 errors after the move. Also ensure your 404 page is as helpful as possible. It should contain your normal site's navigation and a search function.
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
-
Google Is Indexing my 301 Redirects to Other sites
Long story but now i have a few links from my site 301 redirecting to youtube videos or eCommerce stores. They carry a considerable amount of traffic that i benefit from so i can't take them down, and that traffic is people from other websites, so basically i have backlinks from places that i don't own, to my redirect urls (Ex. http://example.com/redirect) My problem is that google is indexing them and doesn't let them go, i have tried blocking that url from robots.txt but google is still indexing it uncrawled, i have also tried allowing google to crawl it and adding noindex from robots.txt, i have tried removing it from GWT but it pops back again after a few days. Any ideas? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cuarto7150 -
Can an incorrect 301 redirect or .htaccess code cause 500 errors?
Google Webmaster Tools is showing the following message: _Googlebot couldn't access the contents of this URL because the server had an internal error when trying to process the request. These errors tend to be with the server itself, not with the request. _ Before I contact the person who manages the server and hosting (essentially asking if the error is on his end) is there a chance I could have created an issue with an incorrect 301 redirect or other code added to .htaccess incorrectly? Here is the 301 redirect code I am using in .htaccess: RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /([^/.]+/)*(index.html|default.asp)\ HTTP/ RewriteRule ^(([^/.]+/)*)(index|default) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(www.example.com)?$ [NC] RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L] Could adding the following code after that in the .htaccess potentially cause any issues? BEGIN EXPIRES <ifmodule mod_expires.c="">ExpiresActive On
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kimmiedawn
ExpiresDefault "access plus 10 days"
ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 1 week"
ExpiresByType text/plain "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 1 week"
ExpiresByType application/x-icon "access plus 1 year"</ifmodule> END EXPIRES (Edit) I'd like to add that there is a Wordpress blog on the site too at www.example.com/blog with the following code in it's .htaccess: BEGIN WordPress <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog/
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]</ifmodule> END WordPress Thanks0 -
301 vs 410 redirect: What to use when removing a URL from the website
We are in the process of detemining how to handle URLs that are completely removed from our website? Think of these as listings that have an expiration date (i.e. http://www.noodle.org/test-prep/tphU3/sat-group-course). What is the best practice for removing these listings (assuming not many people are linking to them externally). 301 to a general page (i.e. http://www.noodle.org/search/test-prep) Do nothing and leave them up but remove from the site map (as they are no longer useful from a user perspective) return a 404 or 410?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | abargmann0 -
Language Detection redirect: 301 or 302?
We have a site offering a voip app in 4 languages. Users are currently 302 redirected from the root page to /language subpages, depending on their browser language. Discussions about the sense of this aside: Is it correct to use a 302 redirect here or should users be 301 redirected to their respective languages? I don't find any guideline on this whatsoever...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zeepartner1 -
303 redirect
Hi, 303 redirect is a good thing or not ? I have a homepage in 2 languages FR and EN > mywebsite.com/fr/ and mywebsite.com/en/. A 303 redirect is on mywebsite.com to mywebsite.com/fr/. Thanks D.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | android_lyon0 -
DNS or 301 Website Redirect
We are running a marketplace site, so we have thousands of vendors selling their products on our site. Each vendor has a Profile page and we are soon to launch a premium store-front that is white label. Many of these vendors will want to point a custom url to their premium store-front (which is a sub domain of the marketplace) and we are trying to get an understanding of how we should instruct them to point their url in a way that will give the main marketplace site the seo juice. We also want to understand what will show up in the address bar. Will it be their url or our sub domain? Will any of the marketplace seo juice boost their url local listing status?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bloomnation0 -
How to stop Google crawling after 301 redirect?
I have removed all pages from my old website and set 301 redirect to new website. But, I have verified old website with Google webmaster tools' HTML verification file which enable me to track all data and existence of pages in Google search for my old website. I was assumed that, Google will stop crawling and DE-indexed all pages after 301 redirect. Because, I have set 301 redirect before 3 months. Now, I'm able to see Google bot activity on my website with help of Google webmaster tools. You can find out attachment to know more about it. How can it possible & How Google can crawl removed pages? You can see following image to know more about it. First & Second
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
301 - should I redirect entire domain or page for page?
Hi, We recently enabled a 301 on our domain from our old website to our new website. On the advice of fellow mozzer's we copied the old site exactly to the new domain, then did the 301 so that the sites are identical. Question is, should we be doing the 301 as a whole domain redirect, i.e. www.oldsite.com is now > www.newsite.com, or individually setting each page, i.e. www.oldsite.com/page1 is now www.newsite.com/page1 etc for each page in our site? Remembering that both old and new sites (for now) are identical copies. Also we set the 301 about 5 days ago and have verified its working but haven't seen a single change in rank either from the old site or new - is this because Google hasn't likely re-indexed yet? Thanks, Anthony
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Grenadi0
