[author: Jamie Granger]
If you've ever participated in a website overhaul, you know how complex it can be. When it comes time to migrate your website, there are many things to consider. While it's easy to focus on a great new user experience or engaging content to include, it's important to not forget about SEO. The truth is, when migrating your website, you need to make SEO a top priority so you don't lose momentum.
On a recent episode of Ask Googlebot, Google search advocate John Mueller spoke about this concern and offered some guidance. Here's what legal webmasters need to know about launching a new website while running an old one.
Ensuring a smooth transition with redirects
In his video, Mueller advises implementing redirects from your old site to your new site. He said: “Ideally, you would redirect the old website to the new website.” This makes it easier for users to find the correct website. Additionally, and importantly, it can help search engines transfer existing signals to your new domain, potentially boosting its standing. A redirect passes the value of a link pointing to your old domain to your new domain. This transfer of link rights is essential for your new website to maintain its search engine rankings. Changing your domain without redirecting can negatively impact both user experience and search rankings. And of course, web traffic trying to access your old website's domain will be automatically redirected, making things easier.
Tactically speaking, the most common and recommended type of redirect is the 301 permanent redirect. This transfers link equity and ranking power from the existing page to the new page. To set these up, start by mapping which old URLs point to which new URLs. Then, depending on your web server, you can create the redirect by editing the .htaccess file (for Apache) or the server configuration file (for NGINX). This part is very important, so we recommend getting help from your web developer or hosting provider to properly implement the redirect. He suggests leaving redirects in place for at least a year to ensure a smooth transition in both traffic and search engines. Many content management systems, such as WordPress, also have plugins that can automatically create these redirects when you migrate to a new site. Again, if you feel any discomfort with this process, please consult a professional. Because getting them right is essential to maintaining your search rank.
transition from old to new
When starting the process, it's important to realize that leaving conflicting information online can confuse users and negatively impact your SEO. Therefore, it is important to remove or update your old website as soon as possible. Additionally, inconsistent information such as different business hours or contact information on both websites can be harmful as search engines do not know how to index and rank pages with different information. Masu. As mentioned above, we recommend leaving your old site active (with redirects in place) for up to a year. In the meantime, you should run a review to ensure that the information about your company (such as your address) matches the new site. Once your new site is ready, you need to make sure your old site is not publicly available. It's a good idea to check in regularly to see how many people are still accessing your old domain to determine when it's appropriate to permanently remove your old site.
remove:
There's no secret to preserving your search rankings when migrating your site, other than making sure your information is consistent and using 301 redirects to point to your new domain. If done incorrectly, the migration process can have a significant impact on search performance, so we recommend consulting with a website expert who can guide you.
