Safest way to launch a redesign

[DerekM88]

Hey MozFolk,

I was wondering what the best and SAFEST way to handle this situation is; I am doing a redesign of our current website, but the new site will have different content. Should we just forward the entire root domain in the HT Access file? Or redirect each and every URL using a 301? I know these, terms but never actually done it myself, and cannot risk losing the SEO weight of this website.

How do I handle a group of pages that they don't want to continue to use also? Do I just leave those URLs be, or do I forward all of them to one new page (or homepage) on the new site?

Please help me look like a rockstar and save the ship from sinking itself!

[StreamlineMetrics]

How big is the site? It would be ideal to either keep the existing site structure so you don't need to worry about redirecting pages OR 301 as many pages as possible to the new URLs for those pages. If you have any pages on the current site that won't have a counterpart on the new site, then I recommend 301ing as many of those pages to the most relevant page on the new site as possible.

Of course, if your site is thousands or millions of pages large, then it's likely not feasible to manually go in and redirect every single page so I'd recommend at least redirecting the most popular pages to their new counterparts and then possibly redirect all of the remaining pages to the most relevant mid-level pages or even the homepage.

The last thing you want to do is simply redirect all of the pages to the root domain...

[MattJanaway]

It can be a pretty big job if you change the URL structures - depending on how large the website is.

Modesto Siotos wrote a blog on it here.

If you change the structure then ideally, you should forward every page to the closest replacement page on the new design using a 301.

Give the blog a good read, it should hopefully help.

Matt

[DerekM88]

Hey thanks, the site is less than 30 pages. But would it be just as acceptable to just forward the entire domain, or is it better practice to 301 each individual page. And if I do 301 each page, do we ALSO need to forward the domain?

I appreciate your help!

Derek