Gradual roll out of new webpages on temporary subdomain

[RWesley]

I’m working for a company who is looking to gradually replace an existing website with a new website.

They will replace the homepage, then a section, then another section, and so on, until the new site is complete.

All new pages will sit on a temporary subdomain.

So, for example, the URL for the homepage at the moment is www.domain.com, but as soon as the new homepage is ready, that will be launched on a temporary URL / subdomain - www2.domain.com - replacing the old homepage.

The new pages will then gradually increase on www2.domain.com (so journeys will inevitably move across domains) until the whole of the new website is ready on www2.domain.com - at which point it will move on to www.domain.com.

I know this isn’t a good way of doing things - I would much prefer the new site is completely built and then it just replaces the old site with the necessary 301 redirects in place - but the company wants to see the gradual roll out of new page designs.

So, my question is, what’s the best way to manage this without negatively impacting rankings for the existing domain (www.domain.com)?

[RossKernez]

Hi there,

The most important is to redirect all your backlinks via 301 to the new URLs.  Also, you can take a look at this guide.

Ross

[RWesley]

Thanks for the response.

But is it okay to 301 redirect, for example, the homepage to a temporary www2 subdomain, and then back again once the whole site is ready to move back to the www domain?

[RossKernez]

Are you planning to have both versions of the site working at the same time?

Ross

[RossKernez]

If not then I would deindex completely the www2.domain.com and do not set up any redirects at all.  Just have your www.domain.com working in a normal way until you migrate your www2.domain.com to www.domain.com. Also, If you planning to change the URLs on the new version of the website then you need to set up 301 redirects from old URLs to new URLs on your server ( apache or ngnix) so you do not get any broken links.

Ross

[RWesley]

Hi Ross.

Thanks again for the response.

There will only ever be one version of a page, and each time an old page is replaced with a new version, I will 301 redirect from the www version to the www2 version.

My concern is, at the end of the web build all pages on www will have been 301 redirected to www2, and then I’ll need to 301 redirect them all back again to www when the new site is moved off the temporary subdomain. Do you see any problems with this approach?

[RossKernez]

The only problem I see here that you will lose traffic by setting 301s to www2 and then removing those 301s.

Ross

[RWesley]

Hi Ross.

Everything will have a 301.

For example:

• When I launch the new homepage on the temporary subdomain, I will add a 301 redirect from www.domain.com to www2.domain.com.
• When I launch a new section page, I will add a new 301 redirect from www.domain.com/section1 to www2.domain.com/section1.
• When I launch a new product page, I will add a new 301 redirect from www.domain.com/product1 to www2.domain.com/product1.

And then, eventually, when everything is moved back to the www domain, I will setup the following 301 redirects:

• Homepage - From www2.domain.com to www.domain.com
• Section page - From www2.domain.com/section1 to www.domain.com/section1
• Product page - From www2.domain.com/product1 to www.domain.com/product1

Does this make sense? So, everything will have a 301 redirect.

I'm just concerned about the fact I'm basically having to 301 redirect a whole site away from it's original domain to a temporary subdomain, and then back again. Should I be concerned about this?

[RossKernez]

Yes, I got it. That's the only option to do this if you want to pass link juice to www2.domain.com  while you are working on the new site. There is no way to not lose traffic if you want to redirect everything on the page by page basis. Traffic will bounce back after you move back to www.domain.com, but it can takes time.

Ross

[seoelevated]

Unless I'm missing something in the thread here, it seems to me this would be better served by 302. My rationale is that you will be eventually going back to the www URL and you want that to retain the full equity of all its links. So, during the interim period, you would have 302 redirects, and then when you switch back to www, you would simply remove all the redirects.

The only downside I see to that is that during the interim period, one thing you won't be able to measure as the site is gradually updated, is the incremental impact of the new page designs on SEO. You will still be able to measure the new page design in terms of conversion rate and other UX factors, but measuring impact on SEO wouldn't really be feasible.

[RWesley]

Hi seoelevated,

Thanks for your response. I have been considering a 302 approach, but I am concerned about how long I can leave 302s in place. If from start to finish, the roll out takes 12 - 18 months, will that cause any problems?

Thanks!

[seoelevated]

I'm not sure how the search engines look at 302 redirects which are in place for a prolonged time. I'll be interested to see if anyone else on this thread has additional insights about that. What I can say is that I've used 302 redirects in some cases for prolonged period of time (although not as long as 12-18 months, perhaps more like 4-6 months) and have not experienced issues from that approach. But others on this forum may have more experience with 302 redirects over that period of time.

The other thing I'll mention is that some tools like Moz Pro will report 302 Redirects as "issues". My perspective is to look through these because some might be unintentional, and then to ignore when they are inentional/strategic.

[Expansyon]

The most important is to redirect all your backlinks via 301 to the new URLs. As you've been told, why not develop the entire site in the subdomain and then move it to the new one, so you don't play with redirects and traffic from one subdomain to another.