The Art of SEO, 3rd Edition

CHAPTER TWELVE

Domain Changes, Redesigns, and Troubleshooting

Whenever you make structural changes to your website, there is a risk that you will confuse the search engines and harm your search rankings and organic traffic. The types of site changes that can influence your site’s organic search performance include changing your domain name, changing your content management system (CMS), redesigning your site, adding ecommerce functionality, changing your blog platform, and many others—basically, anything that fundamentally alters your site’s frontend and/or backend visual or functional elements can potentially influence your organic search performance.

In this chapter, we will review the various scenarios from the top down. Be sure to refer back to “Content Delivery and Search Spider Control” to review the technical specifics of options for moving content from one location to another.

Google groups site moves into one of two categories (http://bit.ly/site_moves): moves “with” URL changes, and moves “without” URL changes. It provides specific guidelines for handling moves within each category.

The Basics of Moving Content

“Moving content” refers to a situation in which content that used to be located and accessed at one URL (e.g., http://www.yourdomain.com/pageA) is moved to another URL (e.g., http://www.yourdomain.com/products/pageA). One of your goals when you move content is to make sure users and search engine crawlers that attempt to visit the old URL ...