In the fourth episode of SEO Mythbusting season 2, Martin Splitt (Developer Advocate, Google) and Glenn Gabe (Digital Marketing Consultant, G-Squared Interactive) discuss the most common SEO questions and myths around site moves, URL migration, domain name changes, and more!
Specific timestamped topics discussed in this episode:
Redirecting images during a site redesign or migration (0:00)
Will you always experience a drop in traffic with a domain name change or a site migration? (1:53)
Buying a new domain name with history & traffic anomalies (2:40)
Site merger vs site move (6:24)
What goes on on the Google side once a domain name change is triggered? (8:12)
Why would one use the Change of Address Tool? (10:16)
If a site moves, is there a reassessment of content quality by Google? (11:15)
Should you revert back if a site migration results in a major drop in traffic? (14:54)
Should one unblock URLs normally blocked by robots.txt during a site migration? (17:31)
Most common problems after a site moves & doing things step-by-step (18:16)
(19:32)
Documentation mentioned in this episode:
How to 301 redirect images during a website redesign or CMS migration → https://goo.gle/32tGMJz
Site moves (with URL changes) → https://goo.gle/2FQti2E
Change of Address Tool → https://goo.gle/3lh3uNq
Penguin update → https://goo.gle/32j0ibi
Watch more SEO Mythbusting episodes → https://goo.gle/SEO-Mythbusting
Subscribe to the Google Search Central Channel → https://goo.gle/SearchCentral
#SEO #GoogleSearch
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Does the same differ for say a YouTube channel name or any social media handle? Or does it play along the same lines?
Update 2023. Disavow has changed. It doesn't have the same weight as it used to. It's more of a suggestion to Google rather than a directive.
Great info, thanks. However I'm still not clear on one important point…
I recently transferred a domain and rebuilt the original WordPress website from scratch using php. This has meant that just about all of the original URLs have been made redundant.
However some make sense to redirect, such as:
Redirect 301 /residential-window-cleaning/ /residential-window-cleaning.php
But what about those URLs which I no longer need and no longer have a physical page? Would it be better to 301 them to the homepage (or other most relevant page), or just leave them to 404 hoping that eventually they'll be no longer indexed?
Thanks.
What if the domain is the same but the host and the design changes but the info is the same.
I like how borderline BS SEO is that SEO myths exist
Is using a server side wildcard redirect good practice? This was done but the old domain urls are still indexed a year later. Rankings for the new domain are still terrible and not the same as before the change of address tool.
I am currently doing a site move and this video clarified lot of things, thank you a lot!!!
#AskGoogleWebmaster
18:37 "really really weird?" lol. Are you seriously with the mindset that we are all trying to cater to your bs ranking factors? Come on.
I'm currently going through multiple website consolidations – it's a minefield and I would give yourself plenty of time when doing this.
Would be good to have a video on websites being merged if possible please!
What will happen if I 301 redirect any Penalized domain with High DA – PA to my new domain?
Please answer me
Who thinks Glenn Gabe looks and talk like Jordan Schlansky from Conan?
The Best Episode so far
Glenn Gabe is an SEO God!
Thanks for sharing this information, hope to see more videos thanks.
Next topic: International SEO please!
Example:
Our current website is geographically in AU but it's on .com TLD not .com.au or .au TLD. We are planning to create or expand in the US. So we wanted to like make the current .com TLD to US and change the TLD of the .com to .com.au or .au.
1. What are the best practices?
2. What will the be technical issues that will occur?
3. Will it affect the traffic and rankings of the current AU TLD which is .com when it's being migrated to .com.au or .au?
We are currently on the following countries below and the next country is the US.
.com/nz/
.com/ie/
.com/uk/
I see many quotes and Shayari websites they all write the same content on our website so why google give them ranking and why google does not penalize these websites?
Dear all.
Thank you for your videos, they are very good in clarifying the cloudy things in our heads.
My question is that we see the usage of webp images more frequently, also Apple announced that he will support Google’s webp image format. Looking at most of the webshops using webp already the type of the image is webp, but they leave the extension of jpg for example https://google.com/image.jpg but type is webp. What could be the reason for that? Wouldn't it be better if the image would have a .webp extension or no extension at all. Is this related somehow to indexing or SEO? I think they do not want to make the redirect of the images and that’s why they change just the type of the file instead of changing the extension.
Thank you.
Remembering to redirect images is a good one. Didn't think of that one. Thanks!
Bless subscribe to the channels youtoub I have many
Nice wall.
https://youtu.be/a3AVkxu-7NE
Nice topic. This is exactly what is wrong with our site.. We will be happy if you can throw some insight here..
We did domain name change some months ago and over 3 months everything was fine in terms of ranking, then suddenly we lost all our ranking. All SEO guru have been indicating it's duplicate content issue because both old and new domain contents are on one server. Can you drop some light on this?
Good questions… Typical answers
Great clarification about the myth that traffic will plummet when migrating to a new site. As long as the URL structures are the same and accessibility is there for Google and your users – everything should stay the same. Thanks Martin and Glenn!
If you migrate your website then check out 301 redirect a few times. Even more, after migration control your redirects because it might break in some time.
Excellent video. Thanks a Lot
Nitip