Any new tips on how to speed up re-listing after re-design?

[Emjmoz]

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!

[Emjmoz]

It would be great to find someone I could trust to call on for future SEO questions, I really need some technical SEO contacts I can work with long term!

[dohertyjf]

Hi Emjmoz! Lots of stuff going on here.  On to your questions.

First about redirects. 301 redirects are permanent redirects, which tells the search engines that a page has permanently moved to the location where the redirect ends (eg you redirect /page/ to /page1/, /page1/ is the final destination). Historically, only 301 redirects have passed link equity through them and been guaranteed to drop the original page (so /page1/ should now rank and /page/ should drop from the search index). Google has, in recent years, been slower to honor 301 redirects but all of this still holds true, and if you're having a big issue with Google not dropping a specific URL you can always Fetch as Googlebot within Search Console. To drop them out at scale, you can short term create a specific XML sitemap with the old URLs and submit in Search Console. Once you see the majority drop out, unsubmit that sitemap.

302 redirects are temporary, meaning the search engines will think that the original page may come back. 302 redirects historically do not pass link equity and do not drop the original URL out of the index. Some search engine representatives have said that if a 302 redirect is left in place for a long time they will start to treat it as a 301, but this is really in answer to some major CMSs using 302s by default and thus hurting their customers.

If you are doing a proper site migration to new URLs, use a 301.

To your question about duplicating the site on a different domain (eg .co.uk) for about a month and then redirecting it back to the original, I would question this. It would be better to put the new site on a subdomain or with a specific parameter on the end of the URL with those URLs canonical'd back to your current existing URLs. Otherwise, you risk duplicate content and hurting your search performance. As you roll the new site out, you should also think about a) sending small amounts of traffic to your new pages to track conversions and interaction and b) you can expose some specific pages to the search engines to see how the search engines treat them. This would be very hard to do with a separate site.

Good luck!

I also see that you mention that you'd like to find someone you could call on for future questions. My company GetCredo.com helps with this. Just search "technical seo getcredo" in Google and you'll find a list that you can contact. Or, feel free to reach out to me on Clarity.fm.

[Emjmoz]

This is brilliant info John, thank you so much. Could you clarify what you mean by

"Think about a) sending small amounts of traffic to your new pages to track conversions and interaction and b) you can expose some specific pages to the search engines to see how the search engines treat them. This would be very hard to do with a separate site." ?

Are you suggesting rolling out the new site page by page would be better than all at once? That wouldn't be possible if rolling out the site on the current domain... It would be great to get a proper handle on exactly what you mean.

Thanks for the contact info- I will be in touch!