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Noah
Noah
Jan 18, 2025, 9:08 PM
Forwarded from another channel:
Forwarded thread from another channel:
Alana Caporale
Alana Caporale
Jan 7, 2025, 10:45 AM
Hey frandz!!
SO our agency is rebranding, and that means a brand new website - YAY
• I'm putting together a whole SEO worksheet so note where our redirects should go, and note where we can improve our Page Titles and Meta Desc.'s
• I used ScreamingFrog to pull all our links and i got maybe double the results as our sitemap, since SF is including the no-index/robot-blocked pages..
*okay now my questions...*
• Do I need to do anything with those random query URLS? Ex: `/?tag="[insert something here]"`
• What else should I pay attention to when doing stuff like this?
• We are switching platforms - Squarespace to WP , anything to know there?
Shawn Huber
Shawn Huber
Jan 7, 2025, 10:52 AM
Hey Alana - if you're changing URLs, then you will want to set up 301 redirects from the old paths to the new paths.
You will also want to keep the old URL paths in your sitemap.xml file for Google to find and crawl to see the 301 redirects. Also make sure to add the new URLs.
I personally like to add tracking codes in the redirects to help monitor how often they are hit - no real benefit to it other than my own reporting and understanding which old URLs are still getting referring traffic.
When you are mapping old to new for the redirects, those random queries if they are just tags or tracking you can ignore them cause they will get picked up in the redircts
Mika Lepistö
Mika Lepistö
Jan 7, 2025, 10:53 AM
I like the redirection plugin for WP. Log 404 errors in it and monitor. It can do regex match as well.
Alana Caporale
Alana Caporale
Jan 7, 2025, 10:53 AM
Yes ! We typically use Redirection @Mika Lepistö ???? Just making a Google Sheet first to make sure we have all the goods
Shawn Huber
Shawn Huber
Jan 7, 2025, 10:54 AM
If possible, set up the redirects in staging and run that through Screaming Frog to make sure that everything redirects as expected and that there aren't multiple hops
Mika Lepistö
Mika Lepistö
Jan 7, 2025, 10:54 AM
I'd redirect as little as possible. You can remove the category prefix on WP with a plugin as well if that helps.
Alana Caporale
Alana Caporale
Jan 7, 2025, 10:55 AM
@Shawn Huber Thank you!!
Most of the paths should be the same, like all the blogs will stay `/blog/[rest-of-the-stuff]` so thats all good
so basically all the other junk just ignore
Shawn Huber
Shawn Huber
Jan 7, 2025, 10:55 AM
if the URL paths don't change then you should be good...in theory lol
Alana Caporale
Alana Caporale
Jan 7, 2025, 10:55 AM
like this junk.. what the eff lol
Shawn Huber
Shawn Huber
Jan 7, 2025, 10:56 AM
Argle bargle -- at least you are blocking that via robots.txt but yeah that's awful
Mika Lepistö
Mika Lepistö
Jan 7, 2025, 10:56 AM
If you can't do staging, you can use a hosts file before swapping DNS.
Also, set your DNS TTL low a couple days before the switch to get it to propagate faster.
Alana Caporale
Alana Caporale
Jan 7, 2025, 10:57 AM
we have the new site on a staging env rn
Alana Caporale
Alana Caporale
Jan 7, 2025, 10:57 AM
I wasnt involved on the v1 of the site so whatever indexing stuff they have in place i have no idea
Shawn Huber
Shawn Huber
Jan 7, 2025, 10:58 AM
Where are the links coming from to those?
Shawn Huber
Shawn Huber
Jan 7, 2025, 10:58 AM
If possible, I'd set those to nofollow
Mika Lepistö
Mika Lepistö
Jan 7, 2025, 10:58 AM
The problem with things like squarespace is you don't have any insight from logs for hits to images etc. so hard to know if it's worth the effort.
I'd probably just look at overall traffic and make a judgement where the rabbit hole depth needs to stop.
Alana Caporale
Alana Caporale
Jan 7, 2025, 10:59 AM
Its all on squarespace rn and im not the most familiar with the config. Probably setting the noindex in there somewhere
Alana Caporale
Alana Caporale
Jan 7, 2025, 10:59 AM
or maybe theres a search console rule , im not sure
Mika Lepistö
Mika Lepistö
Jan 7, 2025, 11:00 AM
Since you're migrating I wouldn't create work on the old CMS. Deal with it at migration
Shawn Huber
Shawn Huber
Jan 7, 2025, 11:00 AM
Fair point, don't do wasted work
Alana Caporale
Alana Caporale
Jan 7, 2025, 11:00 AM
Totally valid. Im such a newb with SEO and want to prove my worth hahaha
Just want to make sure we dont get dinged
Shawn Huber
Shawn Huber
Jan 7, 2025, 11:01 AM
404's aren't a terrible thing if they are meant to be
Shawn Huber
Shawn Huber
Jan 7, 2025, 11:01 AM
they are only an issue if you want the URL to appear on your site, then you have an issue :rolling_on_the_floor_laughing:
Alana Caporale
Alana Caporale
Jan 7, 2025, 11:01 AM
@Mika Lepistö Do you write any noindex rules for the /wp-content folder?
Shawn Huber
Shawn Huber
Jan 7, 2025, 11:01 AM
usually you block that in the robots.txt
Mika Lepistö
Mika Lepistö
Jan 7, 2025, 11:02 AM
A great way to prove your worth, if your environment supports it, is to focus on business metrics. One of those is employee efficiency/focus on what matters.
Alana Caporale
Alana Caporale
Jan 7, 2025, 11:02 AM
thank you guys ???? ????
Alana Caporale
Alana Caporale
Jan 7, 2025, 11:03 AM
Im like small fish big pond rn
Shawn Huber
Shawn Huber
Jan 7, 2025, 11:03 AM
Of course - feel free to reach out more if needed, I know Mika and I, and really anyone on here are more than happy to help
Mika Lepistö
Mika Lepistö
Jan 7, 2025, 11:03 AM
Was just writing similar.
Paul Thompson
Paul Thompson
Jan 9, 2025, 5:15 AM
Inadvisable to block all of /wp-content from crawling with robots.txt. It contains a huge amount of CSS and JavaScript which are essential for rendering page content. Not to mention images etc. If the search crawlers are blocked, they'll have rendering issues which will cause all kinds of indexing weirdness/failures down the line.
Instead, make sure the/wp-content and subdirectores have blank index files so the directories can't be traversed from the front end. This is a common one-click feature in most WP security plugins, or can be accomplished with a simple htaccess/nginx.conf entry.
Alana Caporale
Alana Caporale
Jan 9, 2025, 9:50 AM
ooo interesting to know thank you @Paul Thompson
Andrew Prince
Andrew Prince
Jan 9, 2025, 10:34 AM
As far as titles/descriptions, I’d recommend leaving alone for the launch as much as you’re able then updating after the fact. Keep things as 1:1 as you can so you can isolate any issues.
Paul Thompson
Paul Thompson
Jan 9, 2025, 1:14 PM
@Alana Caporale I think Mika and Shawn might have been thinking of blocking /wp-admin instead. That's a common best-practice recommendation with WordPress - although you do need to include an exemption for admin-ajax.php. So the robots.txt entry would look like this:
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php```
Mika Lepistö
Mika Lepistö
Jan 9, 2025, 3:19 PM
@Paul Thompson the comment by @Shawn Huber for robots.txt disallow was in relation to URLs in the images. I don't see a mention of blocking all of wp-content unless I missed it. But agreed, shouldn't block that wholesale because of resources.
Paul Thompson
Paul Thompson
Jan 9, 2025, 5:25 PM
Yea, Mike - might have just been Slack's awkward (non)threading of replies

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