Forum Moderators: open
(The keyword domain will also be hosted by a more robust web host that offers better service and features.)
My first question is what are the pitfalls of moving my content? And what's the best strategy for moving from old to new: a migration of content, or a bulk and wholesale move, cutting off the old and turning on the new?
Much of what I have said above is conjecture, but it makes sense and the point is that there is nothing to lose by leaving the old site there.
Jim
Yahoo was no problem. In fact, I've switched to using Yahoo for searches because of this. I didn't realize Yahoo's searches were so much more relevant. I hadn't used anything but google for years.
Don't do a 301 until the new site is ranking well.
1) is it "only" the rankings that takes two months to get back to normal, or
2) is it also the indexing of the new domain that takes a full two months?
I'd personally expect the indexing of the new domain to be faster, unless
a) you've got a really huge site, and/or
b) you've got many low PR pages, and/or
c) it's a brand new site you're moving (for some odd reason)
So, typically, the front page and level 2 pages would be re-indexed within, say, from one day to two weeks (for an "established" site), and the rest of the site would follow a bit slower. All assuming that you've done everything "by the book", of course.
>> And what's the best strategy for moving from old to new: a migration of content,
>> or a bulk and wholesale move, cutting off the old and turning on the new?
Bulk and wholesale. If you can, move all the pages to your new domain, but leave the front page off-line so that the domain doesn't answer until you've tested that everything works.
Then, when everything's tested: Open the new domain and make sure you put up 301 redirects [google.com] from the pages on the old domain to the pages on the new. This is the critical part - those 301's are essential. Leave the 301's for as long as you can: Preferably forever, but at least one month.
If you really wish to do a migration, you will have to be very experienced. During this process you will have an increasingly larger proportion of the links on your old site linking to pages and sections on a brand new site. Also, during this process you will easily make errors, so that you will have duplicate pages on two domains.
This will (temporarily) create two "sites with a split personality" and you should avoid that if you can.
Also, in general you should not move domains unless you really have to (as in "have to"). It is not a nice easy experience and there's no "real" SE benefits to it (there might be some benefits in your new domain name though, but that's another story - those benefits will have to outweigh the "costs" of the move).
This is the critical part - those 301's are essential. Leave the 301's for as long as you can: Preferably forever, but at least one month.Yep, Google dropped the old pages rather quickly, but I still get traffic (pretty much the only traffic) via the 301's from Yahoo. And it's been over two months.
I wasn't able to use 301s as the original site was hosted in my ISP space (don't yell!) When I started the site it was just a couple of pages of resources for the members of an email list. I never planned on it becoming what it did.
The traffic is slowly getting better, but it's nowhere near what it was a year ago. It's been like starting over.
This is a G problem. I'm sure it will sort itself out soon enough.Unless G doesn't consider it a problem, just a side effect of sandboxing.
I was away from the www for a bit and find this a very disheartening thread... I think I'll opt for maybe a slow migration of some content and new content on the new site to sort of compliment the old site because I can't afford to "lose" the toe-hold i have in the Big G... (I'll definitely read up on the correct searches to this situation)... But I never thought it could be this bad.
Why don't you just move the obscurely titled domain to the new host? There are very few pitfalls assodiated with this. You could even point the keyword domain at it.
The inpetus for my plan was because I don't like my current provider's service, so staying with them is not an option in my book at the moment.
old domain to the new host.
Bad reading comp. score on my previous attempt on my part. Yes, that's an option, though another one of those heavy lifting jobs I dread to gear up for. But I'll look into that today: it sounds like a good fix. I'll just have to find out what the best way is to get that done without fouling up my G-placements, etc.
With Google rankings as volatile as they are, and only two major providers of organic search engine traffic, I'd think twice about the dubious benefit of a keyword domain against the risk of having problems with Yahoo.
you are correct though. the one that i switched domains y! is not handling 301's at all.
But aside from waiting for Google to get around to a new site ranking, Yahoo is dog slow with inclusion of new sites unless they're PFI. What if Yahoo thumbs their nose at a new domain with the same content as another they've got, given that they're as slow to drop pages as they are to add new sites?
Changing hosts is fine, but is there a definite, for certain plus to having a keyword domain over just adding new, unique content to some directories and new pages on the old domain to have keywords in the filenames so they're in the URL?
If Yahoo ends up being lost, what then if there's a major Google algo change and AGAIN what was working doesn't work any more - especially having ALL the same anchor text in inbound links? What then? What's left if that happens?
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
In any event you can and should still name your directories and pages with keywords.
I caught a bit of an old thread somewhere in WebmasterWorld that mentioned that, and I figured the thinking was similar to the keyword-titled domain name: showing G more matches so to speak. But I couldn't locate anything more about it. It makes some sense, or at least as much as the domain name thinking.
>> similar to the keyword-titled domain name: showing G more matches so to speak
For what it's worth:
With Google, everything is about finding indicators that a specific page is about some subject. A keyword in an URL is one such indicator, but this keyword does not have to be in the domain name.
Let's say you had a page about ..uhmmmm... that's hard... got it! widgets! Lets say blue widgets, even. Then, the benefit of keyword-in-url would be similar for these URLs:
www.bluewidgets.com
www.blue-widgets.com
www.example.com/bluewidgets.html
www.example.com/blue-widgets.html
www.blue.com/widgets.html
www.widgets.com/blue.html
In all six cases, both of the words "blue" and "widgets" are part of the URL, and in all cases, this is an indicator that the page is about blue widgets. It is not the most important thing for the ranking of this page, but it is still an indicator. As algorithms change (they do so constantly) the importance of this one particular indicator relative to the claimed 99+ others will rise and fall.
On the other hand, it seems like this URL will not give you an extra benefit over the six mentioned above:
www.bluewidgets-blue-widgets.com/blue/widgets/bluewidgets/blue-widgets.html
- so doing that (last example) is probably a waste of time.
