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Old Wordpress site, with a link to new SquareSpace website

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Hi, I have a weird question if someone could enlighten me! 

My friend has this old old old Wordpress website brazenmonkey.co.uk

It's been live for such a long time that it's in the top 10 google rankings. 

I created a new Squarespace site for him and was about to transfer it across, but I was told that as it's a new site, Google would need to index it again, and it would likely drop out of the Google top 10 (maybe temporarily, maybe permanently!). 

He said that the current position is too valuable to the business, so I cannot point the old Wordpress one to the new SP one. As a compromise I said I would create a new domain for the updated site brazenmonkey.uk and have a link to it from the old one, something like "Please visit our new site".

Now I know this is really bad practice, but I cannot think of an alternative (I am not a developer).

My question is, will doing this, affect the old site's SEO at all, and will it start to drop as a result. The idea is that in time, if the new one does well in Google, we can put the old one to pasture. 

Any advice would be much appreciated! 

Jimmy

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This is a tricky problem to navigate, and I can only really give my opinion and some general advice, I can't tell you that it won't have a negative impact.

I will say that your idea of having a button redirect from the old website to the new will most likely have a negative impact over time.

The ranking on Google is tied to the domain not the fact that it's built on Wordpress (though wordpress websites do have more tools to optimize SEO, it doesn't mean that they are inherently better.)

The current domain has a great domain authority, and great backlinks. This won't disappear when you move the domain to the new website, but can be effected if you don't set up all of the redirects correctly. This is VERY important. 

image.thumb.png.8c44c8a6a4997329274f1541ca7c4589.png

There are a number of SEO Issues that could be fixed on this website or on the new one. The lack of an SSL certificate is a really big one that would be quickly fixed on Squarespace.

Currently the domain is ranking top (or very close) for a number of important searches, but none with brilliant traffic volume, and it's ranking on page 3/4 of Google search for the term "karaoke Soho" with much higher volumes.

image.thumb.png.2d7b44dd2b02b890f1814be4bd3c67e3.png

 

Just to reiterate my first point, this is only my opinion and advise. Do some more research on domain authority and how that is affected by the website. Read through Squarespace's documentation on SEO and transferring. Set up redirects, monitor on GA and GSC (upload a sitemap and reindex). Use an SEO audit to measure the old website and new, monitor and fix any issues that crop up quickly.  And don't do the button redirect to the new website, that will tank the page retention time and you will lose DA to the new domain (but new domains have no DA attached, and take a long time to build.).

I'm sorry that's all I can offer! 

Please like and upvote if my comments were helpful to you. Cheers!

Zygmunt Spray
Squarespace Website Designer
Contact me: 
https://squarefortytwo.com 

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Hi Ziggy, this is really helpful thank you! I have set up some really good SEO on the .uk version, based on the tutorials provided. Would it be safer to have .co.uk operating as normal, and wait to see if the new .uk version creeps up the board over a month or so?

That way there could be a point where the domain authority for both is really good, or does the mere presence of .uk start to tank the old .co.uk do you think?

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8 minutes ago, Jimmyp24 said:

Would it be safer to have .co.uk operating as normal, and wait to see if the new .uk version creeps up the board over a month or so?

It would be interesting...but the DA won't move in a month or two, new domain names take 3-6 months before they are likely to get any traction. It likely won't rank on that new domain in that time, but that is the domain, not the website's fault.

If you leave both up then eventually the new site, if it's kept up to date might overtake in a number of years, but you're then splitting the DA across two domains, which doesn't help anything. 

brazenmonkey.uk does have SEO issues that could be fixed; 8 pages without an H1, 1 missing and 4 duplicate meta descriptions, 15 pages with low word count.

Honestly, if you're going to use the new website, then taking the plunge and doing the work to mitigate any disruption will have to be your course of action at some point. Redesigning on Wordpress would have some of the same potential issues in itself. So it'll be the choice to leave it how it is and not redesign or transfer the correct way and work to keep building the ranking, there is no half-way house that would be beneficial that I know of.

Please like and upvote if my comments were helpful to you. Cheers!

Zygmunt Spray
Squarespace Website Designer
Contact me: 
https://squarefortytwo.com 

  Did I help? Buy me a coffee?

🔌 Ghost Squarespace Plugins (Referral link)
📈 SEO Space (Referral link)
 SquareWebsites Plugins (Referral link)
 🔲 SQSP Themes (Referral link) 
Spark Plugin (Referral link) 

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Please do! If you have an update on the decision you take, I'd be quite interested to know!

Please like and upvote if my comments were helpful to you. Cheers!

Zygmunt Spray
Squarespace Website Designer
Contact me: 
https://squarefortytwo.com 

  Did I help? Buy me a coffee?

🔌 Ghost Squarespace Plugins (Referral link)
📈 SEO Space (Referral link)
 SquareWebsites Plugins (Referral link)
 🔲 SQSP Themes (Referral link) 
Spark Plugin (Referral link) 

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Hi Ziggy, something that I missed in your original message, you spoke about re-directs.

If I use the SquareSpace 301 redirects, it looks like search engines move the old page ranking to the new one? Does the url have to be exactly the same though i.e. 

brazenmonkey.co.uk/leicester-square       but won't work if it points to 
brazenmonkey.co.uk/leicester_square

This could be my salvation?

Jimmy

301 redirects

301 redirects direct visitors to a different URL when they click a link to a nonexistent page. They tell search engines that a page has moved, and search engines transfer the old page's rank to the new page.

To use a 301 redirect, the original URL can no longer exist, and the new one must exist. Ensure the old URL doesn't exist by deleting the old page, disabling it, or changing its URL.

You should use 301 redirects if:

  • You changed a page's URL (in its page settings).
  • You deleted a page from your site and want to redirect to your homepage.
  • You imported content and the URLs changed. In this scenario, it's usually because your previous site didn't have a page slug for the blog page, just posts.
  • You're redirecting to another domain.
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@Jimmyp24 They do not want 2 sites live. Moving to SS is fine. In general, you'd use an established domain unless a business case can be made for a new one. It is a small site, so an SEO could walk you through on-page and off-page tasks in a short consult. Note, moving from HTTP to HTTPS is also a form of a migration: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/site-move-with-url-changes

For anyone reading this, if the basics of 301 redirects are new to you, then you should not perform a site migration for someone else's existing business without assistance. This also applies to structural redesigns.

Have SEO questions? Chances are we've written about it! Try a quick Google search to find our advice. Or for personalized support, see our consulting and training sessions.  Official Squarespace Experts since 2014 

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