queueneGuible
New Member
Hi, first time poster here. I'm the webmaster for smh.com a hospital in Sarasota, FL. They brought me on in July and I found they were using Dreamweaver, straight HTML and had nearly 100,000 files on their webserver. A complete mess. The site is hosted internally currently.
Well, I've rebuilt the entire site from the ground up using a custom CMS I built and database driven content. The new system is sleek, slim, organized and fast and I've spent the last couple months just moving all the old content over into the new system. Oh yea, and its on a new remote, dedicated server we are leasing so I have complete control. Was a PITA going through I.S. here to make any server changes.
Here's the issue, we get nearly 50% of our traffic from search engines. All these old old old html pages are deeply ingrained in google. How am I supposed to launch this site and not lose 40,000 visits a month? Should we just bite the bullet and let google slowly re-index us? Anyone who has gone through anything like this please give me any advice you have.
Thanks!
Chris Honest answer? I wouldn't have gone ahead and done the redesign without thinking about a system to pass the old urls onto the new one. Now that everything's done, I'd say you're screwed and just go ahead and do the switch. When you get yelled at, admit that you should have done it differently.
Normally I would suggest Google's 404 redirection service but with Google not having reindexed your site, that wouldn't work.
You can go back through a second time and repoint each and every link though now. That's really your only option. What are you using for a CMS anyway? Quote: Originally Posted by drmike Honest answer? I wouldn't have gone ahead and done the redesign without thinking about a system to pass the old urls onto the new one. Now that everything's done, I'd say you're screwed and just go ahead and do the switch. When you get yelled at, admit that you should have done it differently.
Normally I would suggest Google's 404 redirection service but with Google not having reindexed your site, that wouldn't work.
You can go back through a second time and repoint each and every link though now. That's really your only option. What are you using for a CMS anyway? I built my own CMS in .NET. I still have time, we aren't launching until the end of April. When you say a "system to pass the old urls" what would you have recommended on that? I am guessing all those internal pages are html.
If you can set them on the server for a few months with a 301 redirect for each. Then remove them slowly. Use a 301 redirect to your new pages. That way you will preserver your ranking
of your pages in search engines. Hopes that help OK, good call on the 301, I'll do that for some of our top landing pages. That should cover 30 to 40% of our search engine traffic.
I'm using a .NET based CMS that I built just for this site, drmike. When you say "a system to pass old urls" what would you have recommended? We aren't launching until the end of April. Quote: Originally Posted by webcosmo If you can set them on the server for a few months with a 301 redirect for each. Then remove them slowly. Folks may have missed the bit about the poster having 100k of them.
A htaccess file of 100k redirects, may work but will slow down any server it's on.
A couple of suggestions: http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum92/2447.htm
Quote: Originally Posted by ?Flannag
Well, I've rebuilt the entire site from the ground up using a custom CMS I built and database driven content. The new system is sleek, slim, organized and fast and I've spent the last couple months just moving all the old content over into the new system. Oh yea, and its on a new remote, dedicated server we are leasing so I have complete control. Was a PITA going through I.S. here to make any server changes.
Here's the issue, we get nearly 50% of our traffic from search engines. All these old old old html pages are deeply ingrained in google. How am I supposed to launch this site and not lose 40,000 visits a month? Should we just bite the bullet and let google slowly re-index us? Anyone who has gone through anything like this please give me any advice you have.
Thanks!
Chris Honest answer? I wouldn't have gone ahead and done the redesign without thinking about a system to pass the old urls onto the new one. Now that everything's done, I'd say you're screwed and just go ahead and do the switch. When you get yelled at, admit that you should have done it differently.
Normally I would suggest Google's 404 redirection service but with Google not having reindexed your site, that wouldn't work.
You can go back through a second time and repoint each and every link though now. That's really your only option. What are you using for a CMS anyway? Quote: Originally Posted by drmike Honest answer? I wouldn't have gone ahead and done the redesign without thinking about a system to pass the old urls onto the new one. Now that everything's done, I'd say you're screwed and just go ahead and do the switch. When you get yelled at, admit that you should have done it differently.
Normally I would suggest Google's 404 redirection service but with Google not having reindexed your site, that wouldn't work.
You can go back through a second time and repoint each and every link though now. That's really your only option. What are you using for a CMS anyway? I built my own CMS in .NET. I still have time, we aren't launching until the end of April. When you say a "system to pass the old urls" what would you have recommended on that? I am guessing all those internal pages are html.
If you can set them on the server for a few months with a 301 redirect for each. Then remove them slowly. Use a 301 redirect to your new pages. That way you will preserver your ranking
of your pages in search engines. Hopes that help OK, good call on the 301, I'll do that for some of our top landing pages. That should cover 30 to 40% of our search engine traffic.
I'm using a .NET based CMS that I built just for this site, drmike. When you say "a system to pass old urls" what would you have recommended? We aren't launching until the end of April. Quote: Originally Posted by webcosmo If you can set them on the server for a few months with a 301 redirect for each. Then remove them slowly. Folks may have missed the bit about the poster having 100k of them.
A htaccess file of 100k redirects, may work but will slow down any server it's on.
A couple of suggestions: http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum92/2447.htm
Quote: Originally Posted by ?Flannag