Phasing in new website - new content on www2

[RWesley]

Hi Mozzers,

I'm working on a large website redesign / redevelopment project.

New sections of the website will be phased in over the next 12 months. The plan is to launch all new content on a subdomain (www2.domain.com) while the old site remains on www.domain.com. There will be no duplicate content across the www and www2 sites, as old content will be removed on www as it is replaced with new content on www2.

301 redirects will also be setup from old content on www to new content on www2.

Once the new site on www2 is complete, everything will be moved to www, with a robust 301 redirect setup in place.

Is this approach logical, and can you see any SEO implication for managing the migration in this way?

Thanks!

[Everett]

I don't think I would do it this way, RWesley.

Why do you need both versions to be live and indexable at the same time? Most of the time people use a development environment for this type of thing.

I guess I'm a little confused about the strategy here. Could you explain more about the reason you don't just do all of the work on a non-indexable, private development site and then push it out live to replace the existing site on www. whenever it is complete, along with the redirects from old content URLs to the new ones (if that's even necessary; which it is not if you're replacing old content on the same URL).