Relaunching website in two phases - 301 redirect approach

[RWesley]

Hey Mozzers,

Interested to know your thoughts on the following situation.

I am relaunching a website with an updated URL structure in TWO phases. Phase one will be a much smaller version of the site, with 30% of the pages going live - the remaining 70% of page won't be available until Phase two.

In Phase one, these 30% of pages will be 301 redirected from their like-for-like versions - old site to new site.

The remaining 70%... because the like-for-like pages won't be available until Phase two, which is likely to be launched in 3 months time, should I do a temporary redirect on these pages (302) to the new homepage for the time being, until the new versions of the pages are live - and then implement the 301 from old url to new url.

A bit of a messy situation, and not ideal for SEO, but my hands are tied as the organisation is pushing ahead with this phased approach. So, interested to hear your thoughts on an appropriate 301 migration plan.

[WebElaine]

I had to do a similar migration, and my solution was similar - 302 redirect all the missing content. In our case, all of the missing content was contained in blog posts, so I 302'd them all to the blog. I would recommend something similar if possible - if you can group the missing content and land people somewhere similar to provide the best possible user experience, that's your best bet. If people are looking for a missing blog article, maybe they can still find something interesting to read in the 30% of blog articles that are posted. If they are looking for a missing product category, maybe they can still find something interesting in your main store page.

Alternatively, if you have the ability to keep the 70% of content within the old structure while launching the 30% of updated hierarchy, it would be a better solution. Sometimes moving from one CMS to another, you can leave old content on the old CMS and only redirect and push out new content on the new CMS. Just depends on your situation.