Changing Website Structure

Nora. · 05-31-2009, 02:29 AM

I'm about to change my website's CMS which would mean losing the current website structure. What is the best way to do this without losing any rankings? I have considered redirects but I have over 400 pages that would need redirecting. Any tips would be appreciated.

Will.Spencer · 05-31-2009, 08:38 AM

You definitely need to use either Redirect or Rewrites to preserve the SEO value of your site.

400 pages isn't so much. It's less than a days work.

Are there patterns you can use to make a regular expression, or will every page have a new and unrelated URL?

angilina · 05-31-2009, 01:04 PM

You can use 301 redirects but still, it is not guaranteed that your site's ranking will not change.

Doing such changing may or may not have any impact on your site's SERPs.

Just try to make the changes quickly. The faster you do the work, the better it will be.

Nora. · 06-01-2009, 12:43 AM

Thanks for the advice.

The URL's will be a simple version of the current URL's and a little more search engine friendly. I'll try to get it done as fast as possible by testing it offline so I only have to upload the files and database once it's done.

One thing I'm a little concerned about is the .htaccess file, won't many redirects cause problems?

P.O.S. · 06-01-2009, 01:05 AM

Have you read about the "rel=canonical" code? You can try, I've read that it can be used to redirect pages not just differentiate 2 different URLS with the same content.

Nora. · 06-01-2009, 01:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by P.O.S.

Have you read about the "rel=canonical" code? You can try, I've read that it can be used to redirect pages not just differentiate 2 different URLS with the same content.

Thanks for the tip.

I've read about it but the old URL's will no longer exist once I change the CMS so there won't be any duplicate pages to which I can add rel=canonical.

P.O.S. · 06-01-2009, 01:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nora.

Thanks for the tip.

I've read about it but the old URL's will no longer exist once I change the CMS so there won't be any duplicate pages to which I can add rel=canonical.

Good luck with the redirects then

axolotl · 06-02-2009, 10:22 AM

Hi, I face the same issue of wanting to change the URL structure on my site. I don't fullly understand what happens to the old URLs after 301 redirects have been set up. Even with redirects in place, the old URLs must eventually drop out of the google index, taking whatever backlinks they had with them--is that right? Are redirected URLs automatically no longer indexed by Google, and how long does it take them to drop out? I think I just don't quite get the whole process, thanks if anyone can help.

Will.Spencer · 06-02-2009, 11:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by angilina

You can use 301 redirects but still, it is not guaranteed that your site's ranking will not change.

Nothing in this business is guaranteed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by angilina

Doing such changing may or may not have any impact on your site's SERPs.

I've done this plenty of times, with no SERP changes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by angilina

Just try to make the changes quickly. The faster you do the work, the better it will be.

You might want to find the video where Matt Cutts explains that you should make some changes slowly, to avoid confusing Google.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nora.

One thing I'm a little concerned about is the .htaccess file, won't many redirects cause problems?

They do cause a small performance hit. If it's your own web server, you can place them in httpd.conf instead of .htaccess to lower the performance hit.

But, not having them is far worse.

Quote:

Originally Posted by axolotl

I don't fullly understand what happens to the old URLs after 301 redirects have been set up. Even with redirects in place, the old URLs must eventually drop out of the google index, taking whatever backlinks they had with them--is that right?

The old URL's are replaced in the SERPS with the new URLs.

The backlinks still count, through the old URLs, to the new URLs.

Nora. · 06-02-2009, 12:22 PM

Changing the structure and .htaccess went great, traffic is still the same and I expect the SERPS will be too once the spiders catch on. Thanks again for the tips.

carlowen · 06-02-2009, 07:41 PM

As you are now done with the change and it seems that you are pretty satisfied with the way everything went. That's good. However, you should make sure that you do not have any Broken or Dead links on your website as this might effect your Search Engine rankings. I think you must have checked all the links, if not, I would suggest you to check and repair the Broken or Dead links.

Nora. · 06-02-2009, 11:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by carlowen

As you are now done with the change and it seems that you are pretty satisfied with the way everything went. That's good. However, you should make sure that you do not have any Broken or Dead links on your website as this might effect your Search Engine rankings. I think you must have checked all the links, if not, I would suggest you to check and repair the Broken or Dead links.

Thanks for the tip, checked that and all is looking good.

Even if somehow a page is broken or dead at least I'm able to send out 404 headers now which wasn't the case with the previous script so I'm happy.