301 Effects on Search Engine Optimisation
Having recently carried out a full domain name change I wanted to share some of my finding on doing a full domain 301 from one site to another with you. In theory the practice of 301′ing a full site to another new domain is simple in practice however its a little bit more complex and involved than it might at first seem.
Doing the 301’s themselves is ofcourse not to difficult. You can either do them:
- by writing a series or mod-rewrite or ISAPI rewrite rules, depending on your server
- Write out individual 301 redirects from one URL to the new URL using the 301 redirect command in .htaccess or equivalent.
- Write them into a header function in code PHP, ASP, .NET or whatever called before everything else which returns the appropriate header.
If any of you are interested the authors personal preference is to use mod-rewrite, then code and as a last resort .haccess for rewrite rules however its totally dependant on the situation and some people may find it simpler to use one method over another. Really, its doesn’t matter.
So having done one of the above actions to all the URL’s in a domain, the very next thing to be done is to update all the websites associated back links. Personally I think that currently the best way to do this is to export all back links using the Google Webmaster Tools, Pages with External links tool. The gives you and XML or Excel output which is very easy to work with when you manually go though and update all your back links. Another good tip is to put an actual notice on the home page of your website asking any or your audience who previously linked to you to update those links.
Having done all of the above and given systems some time to catch up we can see the results of a 301. Generally things appear to have gone okay. The new domain was purchased for the maximum 10 years, placed on a unique and SPAM free IP address and also given some back links and content way before the major 301 exercise in order to get an early first index date and hopefully avoid any sandbox effect. Whilst I can confirm that the above strategy worked and no sandbox effect as can be seen was suffered there are some possible issues.
- Page rank is however than expected having moved from a PR or 5 to a PR of 2 on the home page. This may well just be due to the fact that Google have not yet updated their Page Rank systems. They tend to do this every 3 months, so we should find out soon.
- For a time we have links pointing from the old domain to the new domain. Having carried out the 301 much of the link juice between the old site to the new site was lost. It appears that links from the old domain to the new domain carried more weight than the subsequent 301 redirect.
- Certain SERPS have fallen back most probably due to the reduction in link juice passed from the old site and other associated back links perhaps missed in the transfer.
- Trust rank appears to have risen slightly as new articles and any themed topics or pages seem to rank as high if not higher than on the old domain. This is probably due to some slightly dubious entry pages that were previously employed in the old domain.
My advice to anyone thinking of doing such a task is to not underestimate how long it might take to get things right and to update all your back links. My general thoughts on the whole process are that it has been a very useful exercise, has consolidated our brands and has given some good effects in the Search Engines. I do however feel that the full benefits or all our hard work are still to come and we look forward to the months ahead as we push hard at improving rankings in the search engines for our top key phrases.
