This is a little off the center of SEM, yet I felt many out there have
some experience with my current situation and thus may have some
benchmarks to offer.
Situation. My e-merchandising client is in process of an entire re-
make of the website. An unavoidable consequence is all the page URLs -
save the home page - will change. The site is mature (10 years old)
and a number of pages have earned their way into strong positions in
organic search rankings and their sales are very heavily dependent
upon this positioning. We are retaining tag and copy text that are
relevant to SEO and plan to do a number of 301 redirects to give the
new pages a leg up.
I am aware that it takes a period of time before old-no-longer-active
page URLs disappear from the search engine indexes. I am also aware it
takes a period of time before the new page URLs appear in the indexes
and appear in their "natural" ranking position.
The info or experience I seek from you are: 1) How many months might
we expect our no-longer-active Page URLs to remain in their search
engine ranking position before they get removed? 2) How many months
might we expect it to take for our new Page URLs to attain their
natural level in search engine results?
Roscoe, we've dealt with this several times in the last few months:
We 301 EVERY old page to the most appropriate new page, even if multiple old ones go to the same new one.
1. I could not find an answer anywhere about how long the old ones needed to remain- I read in forums SEO's recommending 6 months- but technically it could be the first time googlebot indexes the 301'd and new pages. Because I don't know, we haven't removed the 301's.
2. We have had new pages get #1 results for the same kws that old ones got the #1 result for within less than a week. We did this to an entirely new domain name, actually. I believe in some cases a few fell because the domain name was different- I think at some point the age of your new domain affects the rankings. But if all yours are on the same site, it shouldn't be as much of an issue. There could be an issue with the new pages' ages. I don't know if the age of the new page gets credit from the age of the old page or not. But I would think they'd hit stable SERP levels pretty quickly... can't give you an exact timeframe, but I'm guessing less than a month. Toolbar pagerank (TBPR) for each page is another issue- that might change substantially in the next big TBPR update.
On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 4:48 PM, roscoe <roscoetra...@gmail.com> wrote:
> This is a little off the center of SEM, yet I felt many out there have > some experience with my current situation and thus may have some > benchmarks to offer.
> Situation. My e-merchandising client is in process of an entire re- > make of the website. An unavoidable consequence is all the page URLs - > save the home page - will change. The site is mature (10 years old) > and a number of pages have earned their way into strong positions in > organic search rankings and their sales are very heavily dependent > upon this positioning. We are retaining tag and copy text that are > relevant to SEO and plan to do a number of 301 redirects to give the > new pages a leg up.
> I am aware that it takes a period of time before old-no-longer-active > page URLs disappear from the search engine indexes. I am also aware it > takes a period of time before the new page URLs appear in the indexes > and appear in their "natural" ranking position.
> The info or experience I seek from you are: 1) How many months might > we expect our no-longer-active Page URLs to remain in their search > engine ranking position before they get removed? 2) How many months > might we expect it to take for our new Page URLs to attain their > natural level in search engine results?
There's no good reason to remove them - if there are links from
anywhere, the visitors coming through those links will still need
redirects. Since I would normally implement the redirects within a
custom 404 error script, we would never remove them.
The custom 404 script goes something like this:
1. Look up the requested URL in a database
2. The database records the appropriate response - a 301 for some
pages, etc.
3. If the requested URL isn't in the database, log & notify admin and
deliver the standard 404 page.
> 1. I could not find an answer anywhere about how long the old ones needed to
> remain- I read in forums SEO's recommending 6 months- but technically it
> could be the first time googlebot indexes the 301'd and new pages. Because
> I don't know, we haven't removed the 301's.
> 2. We have had new pages get #1 results for the same kws that old ones got
> the #1 result for within less than a week. We did this to an entirely new
> domain name, actually. I believe in some cases a few fell because the
> domain name was different- I think at some point the age of your new domain
> affects the rankings. But if all yours are on the same site, it shouldn't
> be as much of an issue. There could be an issue with the new pages' ages.
> I don't know if the age of the new page gets credit from the age of the old
> page or not. But I would think they'd hit stable SERP levels pretty
> quickly... can't give you an exact timeframe, but I'm guessing less than a
> month. Toolbar pagerank (TBPR) for each page is another issue- that might
> change substantially in the next big TBPR update.
> On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 4:48 PM, roscoe <roscoetra...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > This is a little off the center of SEM, yet I felt many out there have
> > some experience with my current situation and thus may have some
> > benchmarks to offer.
> > Situation. My e-merchandising client is in process of an entire re-
> > make of the website. An unavoidable consequence is all the page URLs -
> > save the home page - will change. The site is mature (10 years old)
> > and a number of pages have earned their way into strong positions in
> > organic search rankings and their sales are very heavily dependent
> > upon this positioning. We are retaining tag and copy text that are
> > relevant to SEO and plan to do a number of 301 redirects to give the
> > new pages a leg up.
> > I am aware that it takes a period of time before old-no-longer-active
> > page URLs disappear from the search engine indexes. I am also aware it
> > takes a period of time before the new page URLs appear in the indexes
> > and appear in their "natural" ranking position.
> > The info or experience I seek from you are: 1) How many months might
> > we expect our no-longer-active Page URLs to remain in their search
> > engine ranking position before they get removed? 2) How many months
> > might we expect it to take for our new Page URLs to attain their
> > natural level in search engine results?
For Google, if you are registered as the webmaster for the site (with
Google's webmaster tools), you can notify Google of the change and
often get earlier spidering and re-indexing. And, if you tell Google
about the removed pages, the old listings will go away a lot faster.
We see this work within a week.
I don't know if the other SE's have the same cool service.
> This is a little off the center of SEM, yet I felt many out there have
> some experience with my current situation and thus may have some
> benchmarks to offer.
> Situation. My e-merchandising client is in process of an entire re-
> make of the website. An unavoidable consequence is all the page URLs -
> save the home page - will change. The site is mature (10 years old)
> and a number of pages have earned their way into strong positions in
> organic search rankings and their sales are very heavily dependent
> upon this positioning. We are retaining tag and copy text that are
> relevant to SEO and plan to do a number of 301 redirects to give the
> new pages a leg up.
> I am aware that it takes a period of time before old-no-longer-active
> page URLs disappear from the search engine indexes. I am also aware it
> takes a period of time before the new page URLs appear in the indexes
> and appear in their "natural" ranking position.
> The info or experience I seek from you are: 1) How many months might
> we expect our no-longer-active Page URLs to remain in their search
> engine ranking position before they get removed? 2) How many months
> might we expect it to take for our new Page URLs to attain their
> natural level in search engine results?
Good info, Alec. Just curious if you're going into Webmaster tools on
these moves or letting it ride naturally.
Nothing wrong with using .htaccess normally. There are a number of
reasons why we prefer to use the 404 script, but it sort of depends on
the number of redirects.
With thousands of changes, .htaccess gets a little bulky, for one,
unless you're in a position to do something a little more elegant with
regular expressions (e.g. everything moved from /default/ to / and the
file type changed from .cfm to .php). Although, this can also get a
bit dicey. Rand ran into some trouble with "wildcard" redirects when
he moved from socengine to seomoz.
The more complex the move, the more reasons to go with something other
than a list in .htaccess. With a script, you can set cookies, for
example if you're changing affiliate URLs at the same time.
Even if you don't use a 404 error script for redirection, I hope
everyone is watching those 404 errors for link recovery opportunities.
The more natural links you have, the more "typos" are going to happen
in those URLs. If you can spot them, you can redirect and keep the
traffic and link.
Actually our .htaccess redirects are more or less a script, as they
are carefully crafted on regular expressions. You are right - if you
get something wrong, it is all extremely messy. But a script can also
go wrong. Careful spidering tests are essential in both cases.
That's a good idea to add link recovery into the workflow.
Running a tight website is a very long list of things to check and
correct. It would be great to have an automatic tool which checked and
fixed all of this. Sometimes it looks like webwork will have to the
way of farming - larger plantations.
Brian, Dan, Chris, Alec and any future responders.
Thanks a bunch for your insights and help with our major website
overhaul. The devil is truly in the details, eh?
The development firm is building the site on a windows platform so we
won't be able to employ the standard 301 redirects via the .htaccess
file but I know from looking into this previously there is an
equivalent windows script protocol. My job will be on the testing end
to check their work to make sure the redirects perform as I expect.
Also appreciated the reminder on the 404 page. We need to have a
customized one and have Google Analytics code installed on the page so
we can track entrances to the page.
-Roscoe
On May 10, 6:54 am, foliovision <clientc...@emailias.com> wrote:
> Actually our .htaccess redirects are more or less a script, as they
> are carefully crafted on regular expressions. You are right - if you
> get something wrong, it is all extremely messy. But a script can also
> go wrong. Careful spidering tests are essential in both cases.
> That's a good idea to add link recovery into the workflow.
> Running a tight website is a very long list of things to check and
> correct. It would be great to have an automatic tool which checked and
> fixed all of this. Sometimes it looks like webwork will have to the
> way of farming - larger plantations.
I have used it on a few projects and all have worked like a charm.
Damien
From: roscoe <roscoetra...@gmail.com> Reply-To: <SEM2@googlegroups.com> Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 07:05:55 -0700 (PDT) To: "SEM 2.0" <SEM2@googlegroups.com> Subject: [SEM2] Re: Potential Indexing Problems from Comprehensive Change in Page URLs
Brian, Dan, Chris, Alec and any future responders.
Thanks a bunch for your insights and help with our major website overhaul. The devil is truly in the details, eh?
The development firm is building the site on a windows platform so we won't be able to employ the standard 301 redirects via the .htaccess file but I know from looking into this previously there is an equivalent windows script protocol. My job will be on the testing end to check their work to make sure the redirects perform as I expect.
Also appreciated the reminder on the 404 page. We need to have a customized one and have Google Analytics code installed on the page so we can track entrances to the page.
-Roscoe
On May 10, 6:54 am, foliovision <clientc...@emailias.com> wrote:
> Hello Dan,
> Actually our .htaccess redirects are more or less a script, as they > are carefully crafted on regular expressions. You are right - if you > get something wrong, it is all extremely messy. But a script can also > go wrong. Careful spidering tests are essential in both cases.
> That's a good idea to add link recovery into the workflow.
> Running a tight website is a very long list of things to check and > correct. It would be great to have an automatic tool which checked and > fixed all of this. Sometimes it looks like webwork will have to the > way of farming - larger plantations.
______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email ______________________________________________________________________
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I used a fairly heavy-duty .htaccess with 301 redirects and some
renaming of blog posts to move a Blogger blog into a different
subfolder, while converting it to WordPress. All went well and all
redirects functioned as they should at the post level. The visibility
in Google keyword searches was unaffected and high rankings were
maintained without any pause whatsoever.
The only thing I have noticed is that the Google Toolbar PageRank
dropped one point. This may well not matter and may be unrelated to
the transfer, but it was the only adverse sign. Apart from that, it
was a complete success.
The key lesson is to plan well and know in great detail how you will
handle all the small challenges that will arise. For me, it was one
Blogger label that was two words rather than one. Figuring out how to
make that a seamless transition took a little time.
On May 12, 7:10 am, Damien Anderson <dam...@blowfishdigital.com>
wrote:
> I have used it on a few projects and all have worked like a charm.
> Damien
> From: roscoe <roscoetra...@gmail.com>
> Reply-To: <SEM2@googlegroups.com>
> Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 07:05:55 -0700 (PDT)
> To: "SEM 2.0" <SEM2@googlegroups.com>
> Subject: [SEM2] Re: Potential Indexing Problems from Comprehensive Change in
> Page URLs
> Brian, Dan, Chris, Alec and any future responders.
> Thanks a bunch for your insights and help with our major website
> overhaul. The devil is truly in the details, eh?
> The development firm is building the site on a windows platform so we
> won't be able to employ the standard 301 redirects via the .htaccess
> file but I know from looking into this previously there is an
> equivalent windows script protocol. My job will be on the testing end
> to check their work to make sure the redirects perform as I expect.
> Also appreciated the reminder on the 404 page. We need to have a
> customized one and have Google Analytics code installed on the page so
> we can track entrances to the page.
> -Roscoe
> On May 10, 6:54 am, foliovision <clientc...@emailias.com> wrote:
> > Hello Dan,
> > Actually our .htaccess redirects are more or less a script, as they
> > are carefully crafted on regular expressions. You are right - if you
> > get something wrong, it is all extremely messy. But a script can also
> > go wrong. Careful spidering tests are essential in both cases.
> > That's a good idea to add link recovery into the workflow.
> > Running a tight website is a very long list of things to check and
> > correct. It would be great to have an automatic tool which checked and
> > fixed all of this. Sometimes it looks like webwork will have to the
> > way of farming - larger plantations.
> ______________________________________________________________________
> This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System.
> For more information please visithttp://www.messagelabs.com/email > ______________________________________________________________________
> ______________________________________________________________________
> This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System.
> For more information please visithttp://www.messagelabs.com/email > ______________________________________________________________________
