Website Migration Query

[seoec]

We are going to migrate our site but we cannot do this gradually, so before we complete the whole migration, we were thinking of launching the new site on a sub-domain and gradually redirect traffic to the sub-domain, starting with 10%, moving up steadily so that we then migrate to the new site within four/five weeks.

The new site will have a new URL structure on the same domain, with a complete re-design and the IP address will be changing as well, even though the server geographical location will remain the same.

a) Should we noindex the new sub-domain while the new site is on trial?

b) Are there any other issues we should look out for?

Thanks in Advance

[customerparadigm.com]

Honestly, I don't the the gradual migration to the new site is a very good idea.  If you take the route you've outlined, you're likely going to drop in the rankings due to duplicate content issues, or just the fact that you are no-indexing content.  Once you no-index content, it can sometimes take quite a while for the content to be re-indexed after you remove the no-index restriction.

I'd instead recommend putting up the new site in a development / test area.  If this is one a different subdomain, that's fine for now, but you should no-index / no-follow the test site.

Once everything is ready, flip the switch to have the DNS point to the new IP address for the new site, and then disable the existing site.  In order to decrease DNS caching issues, you may wish to set the TTL (time to live) for the A records down to 300 seconds or so.

As your URL stucture is changing, you will want to make sure that the URLS are all 301 redirected to their new location.  You can do this with a mod rewrite rule (if everything is changing from .aspx --> .php), or manually map out each page and put them in your .htaccess file.

I would test these out on a site like the http://httpstatus.io/ site to make sure it works properly.

And my recommendation is not to do the changeover on a Friday afternoon, unless you want to spend the whole weekend troubleshooting issues on the site.

Once the site is live, make sure things like the contact forms are working, and that any images on the old site are also moved over if possible (as you might be using them in email campaigns, etc.).

Hope this helps!

• Jeff

[GregDixson]

I would echo what Jeff says and take care of the migration all at once, otherwise you're bound to have duplicate issues and create a lot more work for yourself, and possibly cleaning-up to do too.

Migrations can get mega-complex, and thorough preparation is key.

I'd recommend reading this: http://moz.com/blog/web-site-migration-guide-tips-for-seos

watching Moz's own migration lessons learned Mozinar: http://moz.com/webinars/domain-migrations-lessons-from-the-moz-transition

and checking out Aleyda Solis' actually very useful infographic for migration considerations: http://moz.com/blog/achieving-an-seo-friendly-domain-migration-the-infographic

Best of luck.

[seoec]

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for taking time to help us out.

Since you rightly pointed out that forwarding traffic gradually to a “/disallow” sub-domain will hurt us, we were thinking of taking this course:

1. Roll out the new site on a /test/ sub-domain with the “disallow” / “no index” instructions
2. Invite some visitors (also via geo-targeting) to click on a banner asking them to visit our new site (We will try not to redirect too much traffic to /test/)
3. Monitor this limited traffic to weed out any problems and use crawling tools to crawl the website for two weeks, identifying and correcting any errors in the process
4. Remove pages from /test/ and push new website “live”

Looking forward to your feedback.

Kindest Regards

Luciano

[seoec]

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for taking time to help us out as well.

We are checking out your recommendations, especially interesting is learning from Moz's experience.

Kindest Regards

Luciano