Replacing Friend's Business Site: Loss of SEO: Launch New Site Instead?

RapidWeaver Classic
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A couple of weeks ago I was asking about how to replace an existing business site, without killing it’s Google ranking. Lots of good advice, but I was left feeling that it could still easily go wrong. Which still worries me as this is my friend’s livelihood.

I’ve been too busy to do it anyway and came up with the idea of launching the new replacement site alongside and not actually replace the old one at all? Suitable URLs are easy to buy and we could work on the SEO and push the replacement site up the rankings? Once there we could kill the old site? I’m pretty sure that my friend has done virtually nothing to improve his SEO for the current site and it should be fairly easy to get the new site up the ranking. Also informing his clients of the new site. It’s a very specialised business and there’s very little to no competition. Once the new site is up and running the old site could then be killed?

I’d appreciate opinions of this idea, I’m probably missing something?

The current site is: http://www.mezzotint.co.uk and I have made an ‘exact’ copy of it in RW6 in order that my friend can easily add to and modify it himself. The current site is hosted by Easily (which needs updating, and that could kill the old site anyway).

Thanks,

Andrew

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A very good, and relevant, question.

I replaced a business site by simply mimicking the URL scheme. It was very easy to do in RW, but it may have been too easy since it was only 5 pages.

I have a similar question for when a business changes domain names. In that case, I think doing 301 redirects would be sufficient.

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What you are saying is doable. However, and this is a big one. Do not just kill the old website unless there is no traffic to it whatsoever. Instead use 301 redirects to the similar pages on the new website, page-by-page. You can also do that sooner than later if you want. The hit will be temporary and it might be a cleaner transition for Google and more importantly the visitors.

Assuming you have the basic of SEO done you should be good to go!

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More than likely you will see a boost in the search rankings simply because it’s a new site that works on mobile. Google likes to see frequent changes.

Just set up 301 redirects from the old pages to the new alternatives and you should be good to go. Obviously try to follow best practices for SEO, such as appropriate page titles etc. The last thing I would do is set up an alternative domain, given that the old one is established and known.

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