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URL Redirects Are Vital When Migrating Platforms

by | Nov 2, 2022

Whether you are migrating your entire website, or are making changes, proper URL redirects are vital to success. Not implementing necessary redirects properly CAN TANK YOUR WEBSITE and ruin all of your SEO credit with Google!

Why Are Redirects So Important During Site Migration or Updates?

When migrating your website or just doing standard updates, you want to make sure to keep all of the SEO (search engine optimization) juice you’ve obtained. Even the slightest change in a URL creates a completely new page, and Google will have to start from scratch to determine the value of the page. There are 2 negative consequences of this.

  1. You lose all rankings and have to wait the several months it will take to regain any juice, and even longer depending on the difficulty of your industry.
  2. Two pages are now created that could be considered so close, they confuse Google on which ones to rank. This will cause Google to rank both pages low, opposed to one page high.

When To Use 301 Redirects

  1. Migrating an entire site and your URL structure is different. Not doing this can tank your entire website which could destroy your momentum resulting in a disastrous crash in sales.
  2. Updating websites and consolidating pages. Now that Google cares more about having multiple topics on a single page or post, many companies are consolidating their content from 4 or 5 different blogs into one super-informative and thorough page. Each of the pages should be redirected this one, not only to avoid cannibalization, but to pass the SEO link juice over.
  3. A product or service is no longer offered. Usually, if this is the case, you would either redirect to a similar or replacing product or service, or redirect to a category or subcategory.

Here’s where you can find the redirects in BigCommerce’s backend.

How To Do 301 Redirects In BigCommerce?
Go to settings, and then scroll down to 301 redirects

With Proper Redirects, How Long Does It Take To Get Rankings Back?

The general rule of thumb is about 1 month. Even if you do the redirects, Google still has to assess the new page and hardly ever just jumps a page up the first time it crawls. Sometimes you will see it fixed before a month and sometimes later, as with all things in the SEO world, there are general rules, but each industry is different.

How Do I Complete These Redirects?

For more information on how to complete this, as each situation may be different, contact us!

Call 877-696-3475 or email [email protected]