I need help on how best to do a complicated site migration. Replacing certain pages with all new content and tools, and keeping the same URL's. The rest just need to disappear safely. Somehow.

[brickbatmove]

I'm completely rebranding a website but keeping the same domain. All content will be replaced and it will use a different theme and mostly new plugins.

I've been building the new site as a different site in Dev mode on WPEngine. This means it currently has a made-up domain that needs to replace the current site. I know I need to somehow redirect the content from the old version of the site. But I'm never going to use that content again. (I could transfer it to be a Dev site for the current domain and automatically replace it with the click of a button - just as another option.)

What's the best way to replace blahblah.com with a completely new blahblah.com if I'm not using any of the old content? There are only about 4 URL'st, such as blahblah.com/contact hat will remain the same - with all content replaced. There are about 100 URL's that will no longer be in use or have any part of them ever used again. Can this be done safely?

[MattJanaway]

Before answering, it's important to understand your motive for removing 100+ pages from your site.

• Are the pages you plan on letting expire unique and useful content?
• Do these pages generate traffic?
• Do any of these pages have visibility in search at the moment? If so, removing them will limit your visibility (and traffic) - regardless of redirects. If there isn't a relevant page on the new website to redirect the old page to, your rankings won't last too long once Google figures out that the replacement page is useless for the specific search query. Arguably, setting these URL's to a 410 instead of 301 redirecting them to a non-relevant page is the best way to proceed.

In some instances, removing pages could actually help your site if the quality of those pages is poor, the content is taken from elsewhere, or if they are relatively thin pages.

There are lots of other questions, too, depending on your answers. Would you mind sharing the URL's in question?

[Everett]

Hello Brickbatmove,

Have you done a complete content and URL inventory yet? You need a list of every URL on the current site with columns for traffic by source, count of internal links and count of backlinks, at minimum. Anything with an external link does need to be redirected to the new URL. Even if you don't keep the content, redirect the URL to something similar on the new site.

How to do a site migration safely is beyond the scope of Q&A. I suggest you read some guides like the ones below, if you haven't already:

https://moz.com/blog/website-migration-guide

https://searchengineland.com/site-migration-seo-checklist-dont-lose-traffic-286880

https://www.brightedge.com/blog/a-step-by-step-guide-to-nailing-your-next-site-migration/

[Guest]

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