Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Site A: Oldest site (2,5 years old), many external inlinks, good rankings and good domain name for marketing purposes.
Site B: Second oldest (1,5 years old), few external inlinks, moderate rankings, bad domain name
Site C: Newest (0,8 years old), very few external inlinks, low rankings, bad domain name
I want to consolidate all three sites and have them run under site A. This will greatly increase the size of site A and make the site so much more interesting for our visitors. I run IIS with ASP as my scripting language, my questions:
A] How can I best redirect the old pages from sites B and C to the new pages on site A. I always use the very simple: Response.Redirect in ASP but all this talk of 301-redirects got me thinking there might be something better. Some of the pages will run under the exact same location under site A but some I would like to move to new locations.
B] As part of the consolidation I want to re-structure the new site A in a way that will also move the current pages on site A to new locations. Should I not do that out of fear of losing my rankings? Reading through the redirect horror-stories I am starting to feel that I should keep my pages on their old locations within site A... Will google not pick up quickly on the fact that I have moved pages on the same site to a new location... should be pretty easy one would expect.
C] I have been reading about the 301 redirect from non-www to www... and I bet I am a dumbass... but I cannot find a page that simply explains to me how to do this in IIS...
I know the story is long and that I must come across as a n00b, and worst, a n00b not willing to do research, but please indulge...we cannot all be webmasters of the universe so please donate some of your wisdom to lesser gods :)
So I'd suggest getting the newly consolidated single domain happening first. When that is showing happy signs in the Google SERPs, then consider, carefully if you need to restructure and how to go at it. Any time you change a page's url, there is a bump in the road.
Permanent 301 redirect in IIS
"non-www" to "with-www"1. After the www.example.com website is set up, now set up
example.com (without the www) as a website in Internet
Services Manager.
2. Select the example.com web site in Internet Services manager
and enter the properties.
3. In the Home Directory tab, change the option button "When
connecting to this resource the content should come from" to
"A redirection to a URL".
4. Specify the URL as http://www.example.com
5. Check the checkbox that says "A permanent redirection
for this resource."-----------------------------------
Note: you need to use variables if you want to kmaintain the query
strings through the redirect:1. Go into the IIS site properties for the site. In the
"Home Directory" tab, click the option "A redirection to a URL".2. In the Redirect to box, enter http://www.example.com$S$Q
3. Next, check the options that state the client will be sent
to "The exact URL entered above", and "A permanent redirection
for this resource"
A] Keeping all file locations on site A the same as on B and C. In that way I can use a 301 redirect from site B and C to the exact same page locations on A. Advantages: easy to implement
B] Use ASP Response.Redirect from each ASP page in B and C to the new locations on A. Advantages: enables new file locations
Which would you recommend from an SEO perspective?
If I were you, I'd run a trial balloon, move just a few pages over at a time and see if they continue to rank, that way if it totally drops your redirected pages off the map you have only lost a few and not your whole site. Migrate them over a bit at a time until they are all over on the new site.
I would chose the first approach if you find it practical. It's the most transparent and even if the changes trigger a hand check, it would not look suspicious. In general I feel it's the least likely to cause complications.
This may be easier than putting the redirect code in the asp page.
As far as Google picking up pages: they will eventually, but the old ones will be there for months, if not years. Google loves to keep old pages around. After the transfer is done though, you can remove the pages from the old domains via Google remove, and if you keep the ban on robots.txt, Google will obey that.
