In a recent episode of Ask Googlebot, John Mueller, Google’s Search Advocate, talked about how to keep SEO levels high whilst transitioning to a new website, and offered advice on how to do so.
When creating a new website, it’s common practice for a business to keep the old website running until the new site is ready to be launched. This begs the question, what do we do to maintain the existing levels of SEO once the new website has launched?
To reduce implications to your site’s SEO when transitioning from one website to the other, it’s important that the old site is no longer visible to the public on search engines once the new site has launched.
This is because the search engine may struggle to identify the difference between the two pages, which may cause issues with indexing and ranking.
Redirects play an important role in maintaining levels of SEO when transitioning a website from one domain to the other. When a user attempts to access a page on the old website, these redirect links automatically forward the user to the new website.
Redirecting from one domain to the other is crucial, not just to guarantee that users find what they’re looking for, but because it allows the new website to maintain the rankings of the old website by passing on the value of its connections through a process known as link equity transfer.
By using redirects, you can avoid creating duplicate content, which could make it difficult for crawl bots to determine which page to direct users to.
When setting up a redirect from your old domain, it’s important to implement 301 permanent redirects, as these pass the original value and authority from the old page onto the new page, meaning you’ll maintain your search engine rankings.
If you’re thinking of starting a new website and you’re worried about the implications that this may have on your website’s SEO, speak with the friendly team at Engage Web who are always on hand to help.
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