All you need to do is update the XML sitemap URL: https://www.keycdn.com/blog/http-to-https/#gsc

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply. I appreciate you sharing your insights.

Hi all,

I discovered that a site I'm working on has some pages from their old site that are stil live and getting traffic. I would like to add redirects for them to the .htaccess file.

Unfortunately, I have zero experience writing or editing .htaccess files. Here is the existing .htaccess file:

BEGIN WPSuperCache

END WPSuperCache

BEGIN WordPress

<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]</ifmodule>

END WordPress

And here are a few sample lines that I need to add:

Redirect 301 /files/John-Doe.html /staff/
Redirect 301 /files/Jane-Smith.html /staff/
Redirect 301 /files/contact.html /contact/

So my question is, should I place those lines immediately after Rewrite engine on, or just before the closing IfModule tag or...?

There is no consistent pattern that would allow for a single rule or two. Oh, and I will backup the current .htaccess file first!

Many thanks for any help anyone can offer.

Your points about communicating as much as possible offline and by email, etc, are well taken.

I would still like to redirect existing wholesale pages to newwholesaledomain.com, primarily due to a desire to make everything as easy as we can for both types of customers. They want to emphasize the retail side but don't want to make it a pain for wholesale customers in the process.

So I'm inclined to redirect retail pages to newretaildomain.com and wholesale pages to newwholesaledomain.com. All page by page of course. Since the currentdomain.com home page will redirect to newretaildomain.com, we would put a notice on the new home page for our wholesale customers, pointing them to newwholesaledomain.com.

How does that sound? I think you are all correct that I should avoid redirect chains and meta refreshes.

Interesting. At first I thought that it isn't a great experience for wholesale customers, but what if we added a meta refresh so that page has a message like... "The content you are looking for has moved. You will be redirected to the new location automatically in 5 seconds. Please bookmark the correct page at newwholesaledomain.com"

Thanks EGOL. Unfortunately they are committed to a full rebranding and want a new domain.

I have a client who is going to split their retail and wholesale business and rebrand the retail biz. So let’s say they are going to move everything from currentdomain.com to either retaildomain.com or wholesaledomain.com. The most important business for them is the retail site, so they want to pass on as much ranking power as they can from currentdomain.com to retaildomain.com. I see two choices here:

We can 301 redirect all of currentdomain.com to retaildomain.com, and then redirect any wholesale pages to wholesaledomain.com. The advantage is that we can use GSC’s change of address tool to report the change to Google. The downside is that there is a redirect chain (2 hops) to wholesaledomain.com. Would this confuse Google?

Or we can 301 redirect page by page from currentdomain.com to the appropriate page on either new site. This means no redirect chains but it also means that we can’t use GSC’s change of address tool.

Which would you do and why? And is there another option that I'm missing? I appreciate any insights you can share.

Thanks EGOL. I appreciate you taking the time to respond. The competition definitely isn't thin, so I think combining things is best. So would you 301 redirect those URLs or leave the pages up and canonicalize them?

The accounting guide idea is interesting. I'll give it some thought. The company offers electronic medical records software for a niche medical field, so it includes billing, scheduling, patient records, and practice management.

Hi,

I recently took over a site from another SEO firm. They created lots of articles targeting the same terms. The articles aren't bad but I fear they could dilute the site's ranking power for a given term. I don't want to give away the specific industry, but let's say they have eight pages targeting the term "______ billing software." I'd rather focus their resources on ranking one page for that term. Does that make sense? And if so, how do I do that? The company has a writer that can see if any of the content is good enough to add to their primary ______ billing software page. Would you 301 redirect all these pages to the one you want to rank, or would you canonicalize them? Or am I way off base in my thinking?

Thanks to each of you for taking the time to respond with such a great mix of information and opinions. It is very helpful. Now to plow through all the data!

I've got a new client that just fired their former SEO company, which was building spammy links like crazy! Using GSC and Majestic, I've identified 341 linking domains. I'm only a quarter of the way through the list, but it is clear that the overwhelming majority are from directories, article directories and comment spam. So far less than 20% are definitely links I want to keep.

At what point do I keep directory links? I see one with a DA of 61 and a Moz spam score of 0. I realize this is a judgement call that will vary, but I'd love to hear some folks give DA and spam numbers. FWIW, the client's DA is 37.

Thank you. I heard from Moz support a while ago that it isn't just me; they have multiple accounts with this issue. Now that I know that, I'll just wait for a fix. Thanks!

Thank you Patrick. I don't believe there is any script blocking going on. I have tried it in FF and Chrome, and have never had this problem before. I set up Moz Local for all my local SEO clients, so I've done it plenty of times with no issues before. I have sent in a support ticket but I just got a generic "our engineers are looking into it."

The only thing I can think of is that they could be blocking my IP address due to me logging in from multiple accounts from one computer. I always have the client set up their own account, enter their own payment info and then I add the listing. That way they retain control over it which works best for them since most of my local SEO projects are one-off cleanup work.

Can you get past the point where it is hanging up on me?

Hi,

Ive been trying to add new listings for two clients to Moz Local for four days now. They each have their own login, so I don't believe it is an account issue. I have rebooted, tried different browsers, cleared cache, and even tried a different computer, all to no avail.

Here's what happens... I login and click on Add Listing. I search for the business, select the best result and then I just get a bouncing map pin. It never goes any further.