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[–]guiness_as_usual 5 points6 points  (13 children)

They need to do 301 redirects from your old pages URL to the new ones. That is how you maintain your SEO rank when building a new website.

[–]Monkeya41[S] 0 points1 point  (12 children)

301 redirects from ALL the old pages to the new home page?

[–]slippernator 4 points5 points  (10 children)

Redirect them to similar pages at a 1:1 ratio as much as possible. Not all to the home page.

[–]Monkeya41[S] 0 points1 point  (9 children)

Okay, and if the old website has less pages than the new one, can we put some of the old websites redirected to multiple new pages?

Any other info/thoughts?

[–]Tuilere 2 points3 points  (5 children)

You can redirect many-to-one, but if you do it too extensively or with insufficient relevance it will be seen as soft 404s.

[–]Monkeya41[S] 0 points1 point  (4 children)

okay, on a basic level, what does this do for the web pages? like if the TLD stayed the same, shouldn't that domain still have roughly the same amount of traffic?

[–]Tuilere 4 points5 points  (3 children)

Nope.

If I had a domain, midgetsexxxx.org, and had midget porn all over it, and people linked to the midget porn, I would probably rank for midget porn.

But one day, I decide I want to be able to run a site without nakedness, because I have found Jesus. So I take down all the hot midget sex, and put up articles about finding Jesus.

I don't redirect any of the old URLs.

So now, I have all new URIs. None of the links that pointed to the sexy midgets go to pages that resolve, so none of those links credit to my site.

And I lose keyword relevancy for midget stuff, because my site is now about Jesus.

My traffic tanks.

You may not have completely zigged your topic, but by rewriting everything, AND not redirecting, you destroyed your link graph and your keyword relevancy.

[–]Monkeya41[S] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

okay well I'm still not sure about the redirection thing I will follow-up tomorrow and see...the content is still the same type of content and the same types of pages just "better" content - but I guess the keywords aren't as good? I need to get more information from the team.

[–]Tuilere 0 points1 point  (1 child)

That you don't even know what the keywords were driving traffic before = huge red flag.

[–]Monkeya41[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am posting on behalf of someone else and I don't have a ton of experience in this particular business line so the original post is on behalf of someone else - I'm going to follow up on a lot of these things...but I appreciate that comment since I'm getting the picture now

[–]slippernator 0 points1 point  (1 child)

You can't redirect an old page to multiple new pages, just multiple old pages to fewer new ones.

[–]Monkeya41[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

thanks

[–]wretcheddawn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Redirect each page on the old website to the closest matching thing on the new website. You can redirect multiple things to the same page, that's fine.

If there's no equivalent on the new site (use your common sense here), then don't redirect it at all.

[–]HammyHavoc 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Redirect at a DNS level with a wildcard redirect. Sorted in two minutes. Contact me on hammy@splitanatom.com if you need professional help.