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Hi seoelevated,

Thanks for your response. I have been considering a 302 approach, but I am concerned about how long I can leave 302s in place. If from start to finish, the roll out takes 12 - 18 months, will that cause any problems?

Thanks!

Hi Ross.

Everything will have a 301.

For example:

• When I launch the new homepage on the temporary subdomain, I will add a 301 redirect from www.domain.com to www2.domain.com.
• When I launch a new section page, I will add a new 301 redirect from www.domain.com/section1 to www2.domain.com/section1.
• When I launch a new product page, I will add a new 301 redirect from www.domain.com/product1 to www2.domain.com/product1.

And then, eventually, when everything is moved back to the www domain, I will setup the following 301 redirects:

• Homepage - From www2.domain.com to www.domain.com
• Section page - From www2.domain.com/section1 to www.domain.com/section1
• Product page - From www2.domain.com/product1 to www.domain.com/product1

Does this make sense? So, everything will have a 301 redirect.

I'm just concerned about the fact I'm basically having to 301 redirect a whole site away from it's original domain to a temporary subdomain, and then back again. Should I be concerned about this?

Hi Ross.

Thanks again for the response.

There will only ever be one version of a page, and each time an old page is replaced with a new version, I will 301 redirect from the www version to the www2 version.

My concern is, at the end of the web build all pages on www will have been 301 redirected to www2, and then I’ll need to 301 redirect them all back again to www when the new site is moved off the temporary subdomain. Do you see any problems with this approach?

Thanks for the response.

But is it okay to 301 redirect, for example, the homepage to a temporary www2 subdomain, and then back again once the whole site is ready to move back to the www domain?

I’m working for a company who is looking to gradually replace an existing website with a new website.

They will replace the homepage, then a section, then another section, and so on, until the new site is complete.

All new pages will sit on a temporary subdomain.

So, for example, the URL for the homepage at the moment is www.domain.com, but as soon as the new homepage is ready, that will be launched on a temporary URL / subdomain - www2.domain.com - replacing the old homepage.

The new pages will then gradually increase on www2.domain.com (so journeys will inevitably move across domains) until the whole of the new website is ready on www2.domain.com - at which point it will move on to www.domain.com.

I know this isn’t a good way of doing things - I would much prefer the new site is completely built and then it just replaces the old site with the necessary 301 redirects in place - but the company wants to see the gradual roll out of new page designs.

So, my question is, what’s the best way to manage this without negatively impacting rankings for the existing domain (www.domain.com)?

I'm using an Element Visibility trigger to track a value that appears on a page. However, I want to track this value even when the user doesn't scroll to the area of the page where the element is (i.e. when the page is loaded, and the value is displayed below the fold, but the user doesn't scroll down there). Is there a way of doing this

Hi,

I have a link on my www homepage to another subdomain website. Both websites are served on https, and have independent Google Analytics properties.

However, the traffic from the www site to the subdomain site is being reported as Direct, and not Referral traffic.

Any ideas why? See image provided for context...

RCn6HER

Excellent, thank you Chris.

I would prefer to keep the URL path the same, but to be honest the original URL path is a bit of a mess, so I'm taking this opportunity to clean it up.

Really appreciate your help on this!

Hi Chris,

Thanks for getting back to me. That's sound advice, and it makes perfect sense. So, I will do the following:

302 redirect
from www.mydomain.com/old-version-of-page
to www2.mydomain.com/new-version-of-page

Then, once we are ready to publish the new content on to the main www domain, I will do the following because the new URL string will be slightly different from the original:

301 redirect
from www.mydomain.com/old-version-of-page to www.mydomain.com/new-version-of-page

Does that make sense?

Just a couple of other questions, if that's okay:

1. How long do you think the 302 redirects can stay in place? It may have to be there for 12 - 18 months, while we're developing the rest of the new site.
2. I came across this article at the weekend, which suggests the following for the www2 temporary version of pages: (1) pointing a rel=canonical tag from the temporary pages to the main pages, and (2) using the meta robots content="noindex" tag to tell search engines not to index the temporary pages. Would you agree with this approach?

Thanks again!

Hi Chris,

Thanks for replying, I really appreciate it.

In answer to your first question...  we will be incrementally adding new content on the www2 subdomain, 301 redirecting from existing content on the www subdomain. This will be done gradually, over around 24 months, until all of the www content can be 301 redirected to www2 - and a full site is in place on the www2 subdomain. At this point, once everything is on the www2 subdomain, we will then do one final migration to move all new content on www2 back to the www domain, as we don't want our primary domain to be the www2 subdomain long-term.

The content will be similar, but more engaging and richer on the www2 subdomain. But, because 301s will be implemented incrementaly when the new content is launched on www2, there will no duplicate content across the subdomains.

The TLD will remain the same throughout this process.

I hope that answers your questions - let me know if you need any more clarity.

Thanks again!

Hi,

I work for a large company and we're planning to phase in a new website. The idea is to develop key journeys on the new site and serve them on a www2 domain, removing them from the old website which is served on the www domain.

The reason for this is because the old website is over 2,000 pages, and the management want to see new, improved journeys sooner rather than later. So, rather than launching all new pages and journeys at the same time, which will take a long time to design and develop, key journeys will move across to the new site / design sooner and made available to visitors.

Whilst the overall journey might be a bit disjointed in parts (i.e. sending people from old to new site, and vice versa) I can't see a better way of doing it...

Once all new content is complete, 301s will be implemented from old content on www. to new content www2.

Once the phasing is complete, and all new content is in place on www2, 301s will be implemented to point everything back to www.

Does anybody see any problems with this approach? Or any ideas on how to better handle this situation?

Thanks Mozzers!

My site links in Bing search results are pulling through the footer text instead of the meta description (see image). Is there any way of controlling this?

2L2VusT

Hey Mozzers,

I'm seeing more 'New users' than 'Users' in Google Analytics (see screenshot). This is over a 3 year time period.

Any idea why new users would be greater than users?

Thanks!

6lYmU0j

Hey Mozzers,

Our PR team are paying for a featured article on dailymail.co.uk to increase brand visibility and coverage on a high traffic website.

The article, however, is fairly thin content, and it has a couple of follow links back to our own site.

From an SEO point of view, how do you feel about this?

Hi Mozzers,

I'm working on a large website redesign / redevelopment project.

New sections of the website will be phased in over the next 12 months. The plan is to launch all new content on a subdomain (www2.domain.com) while the old site remains on www.domain.com. There will be no duplicate content across the www and www2 sites, as old content will be removed on www as it is replaced with new content on www2.

301 redirects will also be setup from old content on www to new content on www2.

Once the new site on www2 is complete, everything will be moved to www, with a robust 301 redirect setup in place.

Is this approach logical, and can you see any SEO implication for managing the migration in this way?

Thanks!

Hey Mozzers,

Interested to know your thoughts on the following situation.

I am relaunching a website with an updated URL structure in TWO phases. Phase one will be a much smaller version of the site, with 30% of the pages going live - the remaining 70% of page won't be available until Phase two.

In Phase one, these 30% of pages will be 301 redirected from their like-for-like versions - old site to new site.

The remaining 70%... because the like-for-like pages won't be available until Phase two, which is likely to be launched in 3 months time, should I do a temporary redirect on these pages (302) to the new homepage for the time being, until the new versions of the pages are live - and then implement the 301 from old url to new url.

A bit of a messy situation, and not ideal for SEO, but my hands are tied as the organisation is pushing ahead with this phased approach. So, interested to hear your thoughts on an appropriate 301 migration plan.