We currently have a website at "somedomain.net/codefest". We do not own this server (or this domain name).
Due to capacity problems, we are now moving to a new server. Since we do not own the old domain name, we are also moving to a new domain name.
Since we'll need to abandon the old server soon, we'll be redirecting all requests to "somedomain.net/codefest/anything" to "newdomain.net/anything".
My problem is, after a lot of effort, our website's page rank is now fairly significant. I'm sure moving our website to a new domain name will be drastically detrimental to our website's search engine rank.
Is there any way we can tell the search bots that we've moved the website? Perhaps, when I redirect from the old site, if I give a 302 redirect, search spiders will notice it?
Is there any other issue related to moving our website that I should be aware of?
Thanks,
jrh
Google recommend a 301 redirect. (301 indicates permanent change. 302 indicates a temporary change.)
They have other advice on their Moving Your Site FAQ page which should be more widely applicable than just Google.
Related
I recently moved a website to another domain, but I am keeping the original domain for a future website. The recently moved website is permanently moved, but I only want traffic to be redirected temporarily to the other domain.
I have read countless 301 vs 302 posts, articles, etc. and have failed to find any that address this particular situation. And no one answered this similar question:
Moving to a new domain and using the old one for a new website - how to handle 301 redirects?
But the difference with my question is: I don't even know that I should be using a 301 redirect for this. What's the best way to handle this situation in general?
301 Moved Permanently doesn't mean that the domain name should never be used again; it means that the content the user requested has moved permanently, which is exactly the situation you describe.
(308 Permanent Redirect is supposed to supplement 301, but it is sometimes treated oddly and doesn't work at all on Windows 7 or 8.1 under IE.)
When you decide to re-use the old domain for a new set of resources, you can simply stop redirecting away from it. By then you hope that people looking for the old resource have updated their bookmarks/links thanks to the 301. It might be polite to allow some duration of time for this transition to occur.
Neither 302 Found nor its replacement 307 Temporary Redirect is appropriate here, as both misrepresent the situation and do not signify that people should permanently look for the old content in the new location: they're going to be mighty confused when the original domain no longer redirects, allegedly the end of a temporary situation, but then also does not serve the expected content.
You can use the .htaccess file to redirect with 307 status code (the successor of 302 in HTTP/1.1)
Redirect 307 / http://other-domain/
Here's a link that you may find helpful. You can also redirect with 308 status code also as #István Rábel suggested
I have around 15+ sites, and we want to drop these sites and merge them into only one site (create pages for each one in the new site).
The 15+ site's domains should be redirected to one site as below:
a.com -> z.com/a
b.com -> z.com/b
c.com -> z.com/c
..
Also, we want to redirect (301) page by page from the old domains to the new the new domain to keep the page's ranking:
a.com/about-us -> z.com/a/about-us
b.com/about/abouus -> z.com/b/about-s
c.com/contactus -> z.com/c/contact-us
Each one of the 15+ sites is running on its own server with a different platform while the new server is IIS.
Currently, I'm thinking of two approaches:
Point the old DNS records to the new server of z.com, and handle all the redirects on the server.
Keep the old site running, and configure redirect rules on each server to redirect each page to the matching page on the new site.
Which approach is better, any other approaches? So far I think the first approach is better since we will control all the redirects in one place - but from the performance wise, is it going to add more headache on the server?
The Scenario
You created a new site and you want to redirect all old sites(15+) to new site (page to page).
All old sites are running in it's own server on different platforms whereas the new one is IIS.
Your options
Point the old DNS records to the new server of z.com, and handle all the redirects on the server.
Advantage
Less cost - you can remove all old sites and the server cost can be saved.
Internal redirection. So, time will be less
Disadvantage
Complex to perform
take care of conflict of similar pages(double check the redirection path)
Keep the old site running, and configure redirect rules on each server to redirect each page to the matching page on the new site
If you can afford the cost of running 15 different sites on 15 servers just to redirect, then only go for this method.
It is just a waste of money and the redirection time will be more.
I think eventually you'll have to shutdown all the other sites as in the long term unlikely does it make sense to keep 15 sites running just to do the redirects.
So as I understand the question is rather on how to better organize the migration to the new system in the short term. So here are my thoughts on this:
how huge is your system
what's your QPS?
how many pages do you have across your sites farm?
do you need to remap URLS for a decent amount of pages?
what's the migration procedure? Will you switch your sites one-by-one or it's technically infeasible and they all need to be swtiched over at once?
If we're talking about a system handling 10 QPS and 1K pages or about a system handling
50K QPS and having 1B pages we need to dynamically remap system load may be a concern and p.2 may look better
rollbacks
note that DNS records can be cached by intermediate servers and if you need to quickly rollback to the previous version if something goes wrong it can be an issue
what kind of systems do you have
Is it actually possible to easily extract URLs from 15 diverse systems and put them to a single point without a risk to lose something valuable?
ease of maintenance
At first glance the first approach looks easier from the maintenance perspective, but I don't know what kind of system you use and how complex the redirection rules need to be.
If they are complex dynamic ones like a.com/product.php?id=1 => z.com/a/iPhone6S moving millions of such urls to a single point could be tricky
SEO
I don't follow the industry closely, but a few years ago both would work ok. I think it's worth consulting those keeping up to date with this industry - it changes very rapidly
Your first approach is definitely the best.
It is easy to maintain
You needn't to keep old infrastructure (though in your second case you'll need to keep only redirecting frontend like apache, nginx or lighthttpd)
There are no performance risks as from one visitor request to old location, redirect answer and than request to new location will come in turn and not simultaneously.
DNS records are not capable of HTTP redirection which is crucial for SEO. To make sure your redirect is 301 HTTP redirect you can use sniffer.
The answer is just make sure your redirect is 301 HTTP redirect so you get your SEO right. Other than that it's just a matter of taste / architecture / money rather than standards.
UPDATE
Read more:
wikipedia
Both Bing and Google recommend using a 301 redirect to change the URL of a page as it is shown in search engine results.
ehow.com
A 301 redirect is a search-engine friendly way to move a domain. The 301-redirected domain does not cause duplicate content in the search engines so that you do not harm your search engine rank. Using a new DNS setting is required to have a new domain name, but it does not redirect browsers or search engines. Both of these methods are used to move to a new domain.
webmasters.stackexchange.com
Duplicate content occurs when the same content is available on two different URLs. To prevent duplicate content on www vs no-www, use 301 redirects to redirect one to the other. To implement redirects, it is the webserver that needs to be configured properly. As long as DNS is pointing to the webserver (either CNAME or A record), then the webserver can be configured properly.
I was stuck with this problem some months back. I wanted to redirect a whole site into a new site's structure. The old site was .php which I know nothing about.
I figured I'd point the old website's DNS at my server and write some MVC code to catch every request, and then use a set of rules using the vb.net Like operator to compare the inbound Url with my ruleset.
It worked a treat. I redirect 300+ pages to my new site with about 10 rules. These include changes of folder structure, a forum (which was mainly junk but had a few good questions), and I implement a "catchall" rule which points to the new home page, in case I missed something.
It worked so well I've packaged it up as a commercial product and it publically available. It is free with link from the destination site (in your case just the single destination site).
https://301redirect.website/
There are a couple of demo videos on the homepage which will explain the setup in a few minutes.
I have a website ranking well in Google, my current website has dashes in and looks like so...
this-is-mine.com
Ive just also bought
thisismine.com
I'd like to point the latter to my first site, but I dont want it to be classed as duplicate content.
I'm unsure if I just do this through 123-reg but will this affect my Google rankings, or is there a correct way of doing this without penalising myself?
According to the link below, my thoughts are confirmed.
A 301 is fine as it forwards everything including page rank to the "new" site. In your case this-is-mine.com.
A 302 could/would be a problem for SEO.
http://seo-hacker.com/301-302-redirect-affect-seo/
If your current website is ranking well then don't disturb it. There is no benefits in pointing multiple domains on one website. You can also make a single page website on the new domain and optimize it for Google and link with your old one.
If you still want to do this then do a 301 redirect but make sure that the domain is new and has no spammy back links pointing to it.
I am managing a website (www.faa.net.au) which is currently running as a standard http:// website.
I am now looking at capturing some information that needs to be confidential. In order to do this, I am looking at purchasing an SSL Certificate for this particular domain.
I have 2 questions really:
Will my Rankings be effected at all?
Will I need to set up 301 redirects if there are links that are referring to http:// instead of https://?
Gong HTTPS will not negatively affect your page rankings. And yes, you should set up a 301 redirect unless this is a temporary change.
In a nutshell, the search engine bots connect to the pages as normal, so it doesn't matter if it's using SSL/TLS or not. The 301 will pretty much update the bots with the current information.
Going https will actually positivly affect your site's SEO as Google has now introduced it as a ranking factor. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal.html
I am rewriting a web application and will be porting procedural PHP code to a framework.
At the same time, the layout of the pages (but not the critical content) is not changing.
I'm thinking that I need to some how port the old URLs by using a 301 Redirect permanent.
Any advice on how to proceed? As this site is long established with a good reputation, it's important we maintain rankings in Bing and Google.
Thanks.
You should use 301 redirects instead, that will carry over the data the engines have for those pages and you should be fine