301 Redirects for SEO: How to Properly Migrate to a New Domain

Amidst the mass confusion (and conflicting information) regarding the utilization of 301 redirects comes clarity in the voice of the CEO of SEO.  When migrating to a new domain, many SEO’s overthink the usage of 301 as a means to an end, causing paralysis by analysis and, ultimately, failed attempts to manage this crucial aspect of search engine optimization.  At Advise Media Group, we were recently tasked with working out a strategy for a client who had spent many hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase top ranking URL’s, 6 total, to be used in driving site visits to the parent site for a global, cosmetic surgery practice.  Additionally, the 6 sites had a collective 400,000+ backlinks that positioned several as absolute authoritative domains in this client’s scope of practice…links that must be maintained in order to this migration to be successful.

In such a complex and competitive landscape, providing exposure even for regionally targeted keywords can be a challenge; doing so for a global campaign is near resource-prohibitive. Outlined below is a simple strategy that effectively merged the message from 6 separate domains to one “parent” site using 301 redirects as the vehicle for success.  Rather than optimizing each domain and spending tremendous resources to achieve the same objective, we chose a cost-friendly solution that maintained the integrity of the backlinks, provided users with one unified message from a singular source, and not only maintained the traffic this client was familiar with, but increased total site visits by 28% in 30 days…all visits, of course, now directed to the parent site integral in helping our client cross-market his services, provide a strong branding message and simplified user experience.

The following are steps you must implement when choosing a 301 redirect as a SEO strategy:

• It’s all about traffic. Make sure you have a Plan B in place should the new domain not rank well in the short term (such as SEM implementation)
• Each originating page must have a corresponding landing page on the new domain, with a similar (or the same) message
• When migrating several sites to one domain, make sure you test one migration at a time before rolling all other sites over to the parent site
• Create 404 error messages helping users navigate to the new site on pages where errors occur
• Make sure the information architecture on the new site is as good (or better) as the IA on originating sites
• Keep hosting original sites until you find that the new domain has replaced them in SERP’s
• Check internal and external links often to ensure that they’ve migrated to the new site as well
• Review crawl errors regularly in the first 90 days

Adherence to the process above will ensure that, while your sites may experience early-on SERP turbulence, the rankings will come back quickly…..and, as is often the case, you will enjoy a noticeable increase in site traffic that puts a smile on everyone’s collective faces.

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