Best Practices When Moving Your Website - How To Move Domains Without Losing SEO Value

Best Practices When Moving Your Website to A New Domain Without Losing SEO Value

Changing the domain name of your website can have a serious impact on SEO and organic traffic and generally it is not advised from SEO perspective. This is because each domain name is linked with several metrics (trust, authority, etc), characteristics (domain age, GEO location signals, etc) and above all the hyperlinks.

Don’t forget that you should never change your domain name unless you have no other option. Changing your domain name is among the most major updates that you can do to your website.

Best Practices When Moving Your Site

However if we are still changing an old domain to a new one then we need to follow following steps in order to minimize the losses of search engine traffic.

1. Register the new domain or purchase an old Domain:
The first thing that you have to do is to acquire a new domain. Note that since the TLD of the domain (.com, .fr, .gr, .de etc) is often used as a GEO location signal, using a new TLD can affect your rankings.


2. Upload a “coming soon” page
By uploading even a single HTML page on your new domain few weeks before moving to it you allow search engines to crawl and index the new website. Moreover have in mind that most search engines try to detect the parked domains by using several classifiers. As a result by placing in your pages some content and by mentioning that this will be the location of the new website you help search engines detect that your new domain is a real website and not a parked one.

3. Transfer smaller parts of your website
Don’t transfer directly all of your pages of your website to the new site but instead try moving smaller segments of it. For example you might want to transfer first a particular subfolder/sub-domain and test whether the transition was successful. Then few weeks later after you validate that your rankings have not been seriously affected you can proceed to moving the rest of the website.

4. Upload your pages to the new Domain
The next step is to upload the pages/images/files of your website to the new website. If you decide to change the structure, folders or paths on the new site, make sure you note down the changes because on the next step you should be able to map the old page URLs to the new ones.

5. Redirect the Old pages to the New ones
Once you upload the content on the new website you will need to place redirects from the old domain to the new one. Note that this should be done on the page level, meaning that each page of the old site should be redirected to the new URL of the page on the new domain. Map each page to the appropriate new URL and don’t just redirect all of them on the new homepage.
It is strongly recommended to use 301 redirects because in this way you manage to pass to the new website most of the metrics, characteristics and statistics (PageRank values, links, anchor text data etc).

6. Use the Change of Address tool in Google Webmaster Console
Another thing that you should do is use the Change of Address tool in Google Webmaster Console. After registering both the old and the new website to Google Webmaster tools you should specify that the old one has been transferred to the new address. The Change of Address tool works at the site level, which means that it clearly helps Google understand that this transition happened for the whole domain and not for specific pages of your site.

7. Update the important Backlinks
Even though the 301 redirects are supposed to pass most of the PageRank and anchor text data, it is strongly recommended to try to update the most important backlinks (links from reputable sources with high PageRank) that point to your old website and link directly to the new pages. Of course you don’t have to contact all the webmasters that link to your website, but instead focus only on the most important ones.

8. Be patient & Keep it up-to-date
Changing your domain name is among the most major updates that you can do to your website. Be patient and make sure you dedicate time to test everything before you transfer your whole website. Also make that you will renew your old domain names regularly and that you will not let them expire. In this way you will not lose any referring traffic or PageRank that is coming from old backlinks. Last but not least don’t forget to maintain the 301 redirects from the old domain to the new one and to renew the change of address every 180 days.

If we follow closely the above steps and we test thoroughly the update, we can minimize the losses of organic traffic.

#Article Source:
http://www.webseoanalytics.com/blog/seo-guide-how-to-change-your-domain-name-without-losing-your-rankings/
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2008/04/best-practices-when-moving-your-site.html

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Google Says They Never Index All The Pages

Google's John Mueller said on Twitter that Google "never will index all pages." Well, it is Twitter and he only had so many characters to write that.

His response was towards a webmaster who wanted to know a way to figure out which pages on his site Google did not index. So John said, "We never index all pages, so you can'f always fix that. Do you see sites with important ones missing? That'd be a bug."

Meaning, it is perfectly normal for you to have a web site of 1,000 page and Google only index 900 or so of those pages.

Heck, even on this site, which has the best content quality of any site on the internet, Google has only indexed 95% of this site. That is I submitted 20,892 web pages and Google indexed only 19,928 pages.

It would however be nice to get a list of the pages Google has not indexed, like to filter out just those pages.

Here is John Mueller's tweet: We never index all pages, so you can'f always fix that. Do you see sites with important ones missing? That'd be a bug.

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Google On Spaces In Your URLs

John Mueller of Google posted a note about spaces in the URL on Google+. You know, the URLs that look like www.domain.com/file name goes here.html.

Should you fill those holes?

John Mueller of Google said "the answer is not "no"" when it comes to the question "Should you encode spaces in URLs as "%20", "+" or as a space (" ")?"

I love when he answers questions with double negatives, makes you scratch your head.

Here is the full post on Google+:

_____________________________________________________________________________

Should you encode spaces in URLs as "%20", "+" or as a space (" ")?

(the answer is not "no" :-)) I run into this question every now and then, maybe this will help someone get it right too :).
TL;DR: use "+" or "%20" in the query-string, use "%20" within the rest of the URL.
_____________________________________________________________________________

So in short, be safe, make sure your URLs do not have spaces in them. It is best to use hyphens, but you can close the holes with the + or "%20" but it is probably best to use hyphens.

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Google: Identical Pages vs Equivalent Pages When Using Canonicals

The topic of when you are allowed to redirect or use a canonical from page A to page B is always an interesting topic.

Google's John Mueller addressed the topic in a recent Google Webmaster Help thread and he was very careful in the word selection this time.

He said that your pages do not need to be "identical" but rather they only need to be "equivalent" when communicating to Google that the pages should be redirected to each other via a canonical.

John said in the thread:
"If these pages are equivalent, even if they're not 100% identical, I'd use a rel=canonical here. With that, all of the signals (such as links to those pages) that we have for the "set" of URLs will be combined in your preferred version. Using a noindex on the other hand would result in only one page being indexed, with all the other pages from that set - and any associated signals we might have - dropping out."

He said the pages do not need to be 100% identical to use it and in fact, even if they are just equivalent, you should use the canonical and don't noindex the page because using the canonical will pass the signals from the old page to the new page.

How do you define equivalent? Well, it means equal in value, amount, function, meaning and so on. So not an exact match but the same output.

Article Source: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-canonical-identical-vs-equivalent-20879.html

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Google Panda 4.2 Roll Out Has To Be Still Rolling Out

Google Panda 4.2 was released in mid/late July 2015 and Google promised us it would roll out over "several months." So 4.2 started around July 18th, which was less than two months ago, about seven weeks ago.

There is no way it has been fully rolled out because it hasn't even been a couple months yet, let alone a few or several and Google said several.

But someone asked Google's John Mueller if it is done rolling out in a Google+ hangout yesterday. John wasn't able to answer the question because he didn't know.

Article Source: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-status-20871.html

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How To Manage Your Old Content

Last month, Google announced that it’s rolling out Panda 4.2 over the next couple of months. It’s the first refresh in almost 10 months of the now-infamous algorithm update that’s partially responsible for the “content is king” mantra that’s swept the search industry.

That’s great news for anyone who was hit last September and has worked to remedy their low-quality content; your hard work should be rewarded as your site slips back into its organic positions. But with every update, it undoubtedly puts some webmasters in a tailspin thinking they’ll be on the losing side of things.

Every time a Panda refresh is announced and the biggest losers are tallied, I can’t help but wonder how it’s even possible there are sites out there still putting out crappy content. Maybe it’s my journalism background, but I’ve always felt that creating irrelevant, spammy content just for the sake of a link or a ranking was never an option; there was just no point.

However, given all the stir Panda updates have caused, it seems I am in the minority on that stance.

Is Your Site As Panda-Proof As You Think?

But spammy, keyword-stuffed and low-quality content is not the only reason why webmasters and content strategists get a little antsy around Panda updates.

Even if you know you have good content, it makes you pause and question all the content on your site: What did I miss? What will Google find on my site? And while you should be evaluating your site’s content regularly, I know I’m not alone in admitting that it doesn’t always happen. Guilty.

One of the common issues you find during a content audit is “dead” content. Dead content is old or outdated content that at one point was useful to your user but may not be helpful any more.

Depending on how much content you have, it could also be slowing down your site, causing Google to crawl and index these less important pages rather than focusing on your more important pieces.

It happens a lot: You focus so much on creating new content that you forget about the content you created a year (or longer) ago. And it happens quickly; blog posts or articles get moved off the home page, tweets stop going out, links stop coming in. So what do you do with this dead content?

Don’t Delete It — Optimize It

New content is necessary, but it takes far more time to create something new than it does to update and optimize something old. That old content is probably still ranking well, but it’s outdated — technology has changed, new information has been presented, or there’s a better way to accomplish the same task.

There are a few things to keep in mind when you’re re-optimizing dead content:

1. Don’t Create A New URL. Many would create an entirely new page to replace the outdated content to get more pages added to the index. That works, but I’d prefer to update the existing content to keep all the authority in one place. That URL ranks well for a reason. Why create a new page and start all over? You also eliminate competing with yourself by keeping all updates on one URL.
2. Update Your Keyword Research. When you optimize, consider any new keywords that you could incorporate to capture net new traffic. The way people search changes every day, so it’s likely they’re searching new keywords but wanting the same information.
3. Optimize Your Call To Action. Since you’re updating your content to be better for your users and perform better in search engines, make sure to think through what you want people to do after they’ve read your blog post (or ebook, services page, how-to guide, or whatever form your content takes). Do you have a new offer? Do you have a newly implemented email database users can sign up for? New product or service to promote? The key is figuring out how to turn that passive reader into an active member in your lead funnel.
4. Start Promoting It Again. Once that content is more relevant, filter it back into your promotion schedule: Create a Facebook post, push it out through Twitter, and include it in your next email campaign. If it’s an important enough post — e.g., it hits on a current trending topic or is an exhaustive resource guide — even consider giving it some placement on your home page or other areas of your site.

OK, Sometimes It Needs To Be Deleted

A lot of your content can be updated and optimized, but there’s some content that just doesn’t need to exist anymore. These are things like:

• Old products or services you no longer offer
• Former employee/executive profiles
• Job postings
• Similar or duplicate blog posts

Here are some tips for handling these types of pages:

1. 301 Redirect. In most cases, a 301 redirect is going to be your best choice for content that needs to be deleted. Point old products or services to their newer counterpart; drive people to your careers page if a specific job is no longer available; choose the blog post that has the most page views or better rankings and redirect the duplicate to it.
2. Custom Messaging. You don’t want to go too crazy on the directs, though — every redirect puts more load on your servers, thus slowing down your site, and that will add up. In some instances, you can simply add some custom messaging and related links to other places users could go if they land on your old content. For example: “This position is currently filled, but check out our Careers page for more openings.” This works particularly well with temporarily out-of-stock products. Don’t delete the URL if the product will become available again in the future, but show comparable items to help fill the user experience.

There’s a lot you can do to make sure your old content is still working for you, but remember not to forgo creating new content to update your old content. You need a healthy mix of both tactics to continually provide the best experience for your users and to keep your content fresh for search engines.

Article Source: http://searchengineland.com/manage-old-outdated-content-226195

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How To Save On SEO Without Being Cheap

A wise person once said that if you think search engine optimization (SEO) is expensive, you should see how expensive cheap SEO gets.

There are few shortcuts when it comes to sustainable search engine optimization. As with any other professional service, quality SEO comes at a price — and premium services are more likely to deliver desired results. But regardless of your online business’ size and marketing budget, there are many ways to save SEO resources.

Don’t Waste Crawler Budget

Few site owners can tell how many pages of their site Google has to crawl in order to index and eventually rank a single page. Let’s assume the ratio is close to ten to one.

For many large sites, the actual ratio is closer to one hundred to one or higher. That means search engine bots have to find and crawl more than a hundred pages of a site before they can rank one — if it ends up ranking at all.

If the crawl-to-useful-content ratio tends to be unfavorable, chances are that the Googlebot is not exclusively crawling pages designed to perform best.

Using the meta noindex tag on pages with little or no content — pages that make a site a potential Panda algorithm candidate or pages that do not perform as expected — is a seasoned technique to help direct major search engine bots to crawl pages that matter (and crawl them more frequently).

Abandon The Rel=”Nofollow” Attribute

There is no reason to apply the rel=”nofollow” attribute on a website’s internal links or on links pointing to associated social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter or Google+.

The rel nofollow attribute — for a short time believed to be the “magic bullet” for PageRank sculpting — indicates to search engines just one thing: There’s no reason to trust the page the link is pointing to.

Despite countless speculations in that regard, there’s no hard evidence that selectively applying rel=”nofollow” to links on your page causes PageRank to be preserved and distributed among other links on the same page.

Unless there are user-generated outgoing links pointing to unverified sites, it’s best to abandon using the rel=”nofollow” attribute once and for all.

File Size Matters

Minimizing page size — and thereby improving load time for search engine crawlers and user alike — is a top priority. Remember, site speed has been a ranking factor for quite some time now.

While there are several ways to reduce page size, a good place to start is by getting rid of page elements that are remnants of a past long gone. Meta keywords, for example, are obsolete. Major search engines have been ignoring them for years.

Using meta keywords serves no other purpose than providing an insight to competitors for which commercial terms a page is meant to rank. It is high time to remove meta keywords.

Download & Document Your Backlinks

When it comes to evaluating backlinks — for example, while assessing risks associated with link building — complete data is essential. The sample provided in Google Search Console (aka Google Webmaster Tools) is limited, but it is being updated on a regular basis.

There’s no guarantee how often that happens, but a few times per week appears to be the average frequency for most sites.

That link data is not only free of charge, it is also temporary — unless you constantly download and preserve it. It may seem like a laborious effort, but documenting your links over time will prove extremely useful for ongoing backlink profile maintenance, especially if you wind up dealing with a manual spam action from Google.

Having that backlink data available when it’s urgently needed will make it much easier to initiate recovery efforts in the event of a Google penalty. If you don’t have this information on hand, you’ll have to spend time crawling your entire backlink portfolio — which, depending on volume, may take up to several weeks in order to build a sample complete enough.

Not downloading the backlink sample provided in Google Search Console is a missed opportunity. There are no good reasons not to download and save the backlink sample on a daily basis.

Document & Amend

Thorough documentation of all ongoing website updates, technical or otherwise, offers the potential to soften any rollbacks if they become a necessity. Documentation is required with any link-building activity, whether in-house or conducted by trusted business associates. In fact, any ongoing link-building activities require two important steps:

• A commitment to 100% transparency, including full disclosure on the volumes and time frames of links built and a complete list of all URLs and associated anchor texts
• A guarantee that specific (or all) links built will be removed on request and without incurring additional cost

Both steps can be part of an amendment to an existing contract and will help foster mutual trust in the quality of ongoing link-building initiatives. They can also significantly lower the cost of a backlink audit and speed up the reconsideration request process if it should become necessary.

Collect Log Data

The value of server logs is frequently underestimated and sometimes ignored altogether, despite its tremendous potential for audit evaluation (and as a bargaining chip driving up the sale price tag for a successful website).

While initially associated with some nominal cost, the potential benefits of collecting and using log data to understand Googlebot and user behaviour alike is unparalleled. There are a number of effective tools aiding log analysis, including (but not limited to) Botify Log Analyzer, Logentries, Logsearch, Logz and Splunk. All of these can be greatly supplemented by Google BigQuery.

Avoid Snake Oil Salesmen

Lastly, one great way of avoiding unnecessary SEO cost is making well-informed decisions and avoiding bogus or dishonest (often automated) search engine optimization services that at best have no impact at all and at worst can jeopardize a site’s reputation with search engines.

Merchant platforms show countless suspicious SEO service offers, not all of which are easily recognized for what they are. That is why continuously following established information sources (such as Google Webmaster Guidelines), as well as leading SEO industry authorities (like Google’s John Mueller) is time well spent.

What are your favorite cost-saving methods when it comes to SEO? Your opinion matters. Please share your thoughts and suggestions in the comments down below.

Article Source: http://searchengineland.com/cheap-seo-228134

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