Old Content after 301 Redirect Success

[matthewparkman]

Hi,

I want to ask what need I do to the old content after my 301 redirect to the new domain with the same content success?

Do I need to remove that old content? Nothing bad happen right?

Thanks

[MrWhippy]

Hi,

We might need some more info to answer this correctly.

However, I will do my best to answer.

First, let me explain what I think you are asking.

You have launched a new domain let say www.example-new.com and you have redirected your pages with a 301 from www.example-old.com to the www.example-new.com.

If this is the case, then all of the traffic that would have gone to the old domain will now be redirected to the new domain, so you can do whatever you want with the old content as no one will see it.

I would suggest making a backup of the old domain before you do anything else. I would also suggest testing the old URLs to ensure that all are being redirected correctly. You can do this with numerous tools if you have a lot of URLs. Screaming frog spider will do it for up to 500 URLs for free.

Also, don't forget that for the link juice to be passed from the old domain to the new domain you need to be redirecting to a page that is considered the same, similar or better on the same topic.

I hope this helps.

Steve

[matthewparkman]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for your kind reply, and here some info that you need:

• I redirected old-domain.com to new-domain.com with a 301 redirect
• I've been tested all the pages on my old domain/URL and that's work finely
• This redirect happen because I want to rebrand my website
• I've checked my old domain on Screaming Frog and all my old URL redirected to my new URL successfully

And I would like to take your suggestion to backup and delete all my content on my old website, maybe this can free up my hosting space, right?

One more question, how long I need to redirect the old domain to new domain? permanently or what?

Thank you.

Matthew

[MrWhippy]

Hi Matthew,

No problem,

Great, I would backup the site and monitor for a few weeks to a month just to be sure. Then you can delete the old content. Make sure you verify the backup first.

You can do this by setting up a local web server on your laptop/pc and restoring the backup there.  If you need guidance on taking the backup let me know which CMS you are using and I will see what I can do to help.

Once you have verified the backup and removed the old domain, keep an eye on google analytics to make sure everything looks ok. (on both sites) and that no 404 errors are starting to show up.

As for how long to keep the 301 in place, indefinitely. That is until you stop seeing any backlinks and traffic coming through them.

Make sure you keep an eye on traffic volumes through this process and rankings in the search engines. You will likely see a small drop off in rankings and traffic due to the rebrand but that should recover. If not then make sure that the pages you are redirecting from are close enough to the ones you are redirecting to.

Its been a long day and I feel like I am rambling so I will leave it there.

If you have any questions let me know

Steve

[matthewparkman]

Hi Steve, thanks for still being here to solve my problem.

For sure, I will do what you tell me to do. I will still use 301 redirect for the moment and maybe permanently to make sure it'll goes correctly.

I'm using WordPress as my CMS. And Steve, I want to ask you about Screaming From crawl. When I crawl my old domain on the software, it shown that just my homepage alone not all my article/post/inner page. You can check my screenshot below.

Is it true? Or I was implemented a wrong redirect code?

Can you tell me how to implement 301 redirect correctly via htacess file? I need this. Or you can check my current implementation below.

<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^old-domain.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.old-domain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://new-domain.com/$1 [L,R=301,NC]</ifmodule>

Is that true? Or I need to add some code more?

Thank you before.

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[MrWhippy]

Hi Matthew,

No problem, apologise for not replying yesterday. I was spending time with the family.

Your redirect code looks good to me, that should redirect all the old URLs to a replica new URL.

so www.example-old.com/content will go to www.example-new.com/content

everything after the domain name will stay the same.

I suspect you only see 1 URL on your old domain in screamingfrog due to the redirect. That makes sense and is fine.

Keep an eye out for 404's in Google analytics and search console and also keep an eye on search console for crawl errors.

From the information you have posted, it looks like you have done everything correctly. It is now just a case of monitoring for any little niggles that may pop up.

Steve

[matthewparkman]

Hi Steve,

Sorry for my delayed reply. I was busy on my offline business.

But, thanks for you help. It really help and my question has been solved wit your answer above

[MrWhippy]

No problem Matthew,

we all have lives away from the internet.

I am glad your issue is now resolved.

Steve