Website redesign launch

[LindaSchumacher]

Hello everyone,

I am in the process of having my consulting website redesigned and have a question about how this may impact SEO. I will be using the same URL as I did before, just simply replacing an old website with a new website.

Obviously the URL structure will change slightly since I am changing navigation names. Page titles will also change.

Do I need to do anything special to ensure that all of the pages from the old website are redirected to the new website?

For example, should I do a page level redirect for each page that remains the same? So that the old "services" page is pointed to the new "services" page?

Or can I simply do a redirect at the index page level?

Thank you in advance for any advice!

Best,

Linda

[SEODinosaur]

As long as your URL will remain the same you do not need any redirects.

If you have a page www.example.com/contact-us and a page www.example.com/connect-with-us and you are combining them, then you would do a 301 redirect from one page to the new page.

[LindaSchumacher]

Hi Donnie,

Thanks for your response. So, are you saying that I won't need a redirect from my old home page to my new homepage, but I should create 301 redirects from my old "internal" pages to my new "internal" pages?

If I have old internal pages that I am not replicating on the new site, should I include a redirect for those to the new homepage?

Thank you.

Linda

[SEODinosaur]

Hi Linda, No I am saying if the URL is changing then you should do a 301 redirect. If the URL is staying the same then you will not need any redirects. However, if you have 5 pages that you want to combine, you can 301 redirect all 5 pages to one of the pages. 301 redirect does a few things, as far as the search engine it tells the search engine that the page has moved this also passes most your link juice (page rank) and prevents duplicate content issues.

[LindaSchumacher]

Ah, I got it. My URL is staying the same, so I do NOT need to do ANY 301 redirects.

Right?

[SEODinosaur]

Correct : )

but if you want to move a page within the site you do.

So if you wanted to move www.yoursite.com/page1 to www.yoursite.com/page2

you would need a 301 redirect because you are changing the URL of that page.

[LindaSchumacher]

Ok, I think I understand. But let me spell it out to make sure.

old site home page = www.mysite.com

new site home page = www.mysite.com

No 301 redirect necessary for this page.

old site services page = www.mysite.com/services

new site services page = www.mysite.com/what-i-offer

301 redirect is necessary for this page from the old "services" page to the new "what-i-offer" page.

Correct?

[SEODinosaur]

Exactly! Good luck!

[LindaSchumacher]

Thank you for your patience in explaining it! I really appreciate your time.