Gradual roll out of new webpages on temporary subdomain
-
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)?
-
The most important is to redirect all your backlinks via 301 to the new URLs. As you've been told, why not develop the entire site in the subdomain and then move it to the new one, so you don't play with redirects and traffic from one subdomain to another.
-
I'm not sure how the search engines look at 302 redirects which are in place for a prolonged time. I'll be interested to see if anyone else on this thread has additional insights about that. What I can say is that I've used 302 redirects in some cases for prolonged period of time (although not as long as 12-18 months, perhaps more like 4-6 months) and have not experienced issues from that approach. But others on this forum may have more experience with 302 redirects over that period of time.
The other thing I'll mention is that some tools like Moz Pro will report 302 Redirects as "issues". My perspective is to look through these because some might be unintentional, and then to ignore when they are inentional/strategic.
-
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!
-
Unless I'm missing something in the thread here, it seems to me this would be better served by 302. My rationale is that you will be eventually going back to the www URL and you want that to retain the full equity of all its links. So, during the interim period, you would have 302 redirects, and then when you switch back to www, you would simply remove all the redirects.
The only downside I see to that is that during the interim period, one thing you won't be able to measure as the site is gradually updated, is the incremental impact of the new page designs on SEO. You will still be able to measure the new page design in terms of conversion rate and other UX factors, but measuring impact on SEO wouldn't really be feasible.
-
Yes, I got it. That's the only option to do this if you want to pass link juice to www2.domain.com while you are working on the new site. There is no way to not lose traffic if you want to redirect everything on the page by page basis. Traffic will bounce back after you move back to www.domain.com, but it can takes time.
Ross
-
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?
-
The only problem I see here that you will lose traffic by setting 301s to www2 and then removing those 301s.
Ross
-
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?
-
If not then I would deindex completely the www2.domain.com and do not set up any redirects at all. Just have your www.domain.com working in a normal way until you migrate your www2.domain.com to www.domain.com. Also, If you planning to change the URLs on the new version of the website then you need to set up 301 redirects from old URLs to new URLs on your server ( apache or ngnix) so you do not get any broken links.
Ross
-
Are you planning to have both versions of the site working at the same time?
Ross
-
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?
-
Hi there,
The most important is to redirect all your backlinks via 301 to the new URLs. Also, you can take a look at this guide.
Ross
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
-
Does redirecting the existing URLs in the website without reducing our current rankings? The new website runs on the bubble, so it seems there is no provisions to redirect the existing URLs to this platform?
Hi Moz Fans, There are some clarification needed in a website revamping and loosing of current website rank. Please go through the questions and would be great if you like to share some insights on it. 1. We would like to revamp our existing website by joining hands with the bubble visual programming platform. Thus, kindly let us know if there are provisions to redirect the existing URLs to this platform. We would also like to know if this kind of redirecting affects the current website ranking. If yes, how can we redirect the existing URLs in bubble without reducing our current rankings? 2. As a part of the revamping of our website, we would like to enquire about the possibilities of its relaunch via bubble. Does it cause any changes for the current rankings of our website if we redirect the existing URLs via bubble? If yes, is there any provision to redirect the URLs without affecting the current ranking of the website?
Web Design | | OceanAirTravels0 -
Any new tips on how to speed up re-listing after re-design?
A few things around re-designing an older but well performing site for search and retaining/ improving SEO value. Lots of effort has been put into content marketing and optimising individual pages on this site, it has a lot of links coming in from well-respected sites (but the domain name will remain the same so that shouldn't be an issue) so I'm very anxious about how the redesign will effect ranking, although the new site will be far more user friendly, beautiful, responsive where the old one is not and faster to load. Would really like to avoid the search engine drop when the site first goes live if at all possible- One idea on this was to make the new site live on another domain - .co.uk for example, whilst keeping the old site up on the .com for a month or so, then switching the records so the new site is then visible on .com and the .co.uk redirects to it. Does this sound at all sensible?! Also any more advice on how best to ensure the new site will do better, not worse for search is hugely appreciated. We have cut a lot of content to make it more user friendly and easy to find information. We will be making sure all old links are redirected to new site (but as there are fewer pages on new site, will it matter if 5 old URLS point to one new URL for instance?) Also what's the difference between 301 and 302 redirects! Thank you so much in advance, massively appreciated your time!
Web Design | | Emjmoz0 -
How to export Wordpress comments ONLY to a new domain
Hi Guys, We have a bit of situation here. We have a website (let's say it is www.oldsite.com) where we had more than 2000 posts. There arose a need whereby we had to move some 60-70 posts from this oldsite.com to another domain of ours (www.newsite.com). So, here is what we did: Move those 60-70 posts manually from oldsite.com to newsite.com Did a 301 redirect of each of those 60-70 posts from oldsite.com to newsite.com. Google has now started to rank the posts from the newsite.com for this. That's all good till now. Now, here comes the situation. We also want to move the comments from some of those posts of oldsite.com (some 10-12 posts out of those 60-70) to the respective posts of newsite.com. How do we do that? Do note that we are pretty comfortable with databases and to some extent PHP. Please help.
Web Design | | seocuppa0 -
Is it ok to redirect an old URL to new URL with anchor tag?
Ex. OLD URL - http://www.mysite.com/shoes/red/description NEW URL - http://www.mysite.com/shoes/red#desc Thanks in advance!
Web Design | | esiow20130 -
New website put up and ALL my keywords fell a LOT!???
I helped a client redesign their new website and we just went live a couple weeks ago. This morning I checked his campaign and 53 keywords fell DRAMATICALLY. Like 35-50 places down in Google for dozens of keywords!? I haven't ever seen a drop that's so dramatic when putting up a new site. Have you ever seen this? Will they bounce back? This site isn't significantly different than the last one. We did forward two other domains to this new site but that wouldn't make a difference, would it? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated! Matthew
Web Design | | Mrupp440 -
What is the best way to point newly built website on new domain name to the original more well known domain?
Live website on abc.com domain is being totally redone and moved to a new platform. to facilitate full testing and compliance, the new look and content was built on a different url - xyz.com for example. Now that all content is approved and testing, we want people visiting the abc.com domain to see the xyz.com website without necessarily redirecting abc.com to xyz.com What is the best to do this? Thanks all
Web Design | | wkismb0 -
New to SEOMoz... where to start?
Hi all. I'm new to SEOMoz and not sure where to start... is there a guide on how to use it? Also, I'm not sure how the link part of works... when I ran a search on some competition websites, all I got was internal links which obviously is useless. Please advise? Rgds
Web Design | | bigojuk
OJ0 -
For a new business which would be the best domain name?
I'm starting a new business selling Whitby Jet and I want to buy the best domain name which will help me in the search engines, I want to use the keywords in the domain name because it think it will help when people link to the website, but whitbyjet.com and whitbyjet.co.uk have both been taken. I could be wrong I think .com is generally thought of as the best and I don't really like the idea of .net or .org So maybe I might have to choose the third word which tends to make the doamin a little bit longer like whitbyjetjewlery.co.uk. Any suggestions would be greatly received.
Web Design | | whitbycottages0