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Migrating website without losing seo authority

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Hi guys,

I'm in the process of a full-scale redesign for my company's website. My major concern is keeping our current site's SEO authority and rankings intact.

My current website is on Webflow, and I was wondering what the best way to go about this is. Has anyone had success migrating to a new website without losing SEO ground and authority? Or is it better to build the new site directly over the old one, maybe by adding new pages and gradually updating?

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8 comments

well, you can do it all.. but SEO authority transfer takes time.. i used to do it back in the day… it was a bit of hit/miss

What would you recommended?

Plan for the hit, prep for the miss

if you are leveraging reverse proxy, you can do it in phases, and ensure you have the 301 and 302 listed accordingly

and rollout pages as it happen…and check the SEO impact of those pages. and then do another batch.

Hey - I often deal with migrations and the rule of thumb is - make it easy for Google to understand what has changed. Some things you can do to ensure good migration with minimal negative impact (which will happen while Google figures things out):

  • Match legacy vs new URLs as much as possible.
  • If not possible, set up redirects.
  • URLs are not just pages but images too, so you can set redirects those too.
  • Update internal links to point to the new site.
  • Make sure you use the Change of Address tool in Search Console which will help Google pick up the changes quicker.

There are a few other little things you can do but the above is some of the main stuff.

I had completely forgot about the images 😅

Thank you guys, much appreciated.

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