When moving over to a new Content Management System CMS or even redesigning your website you risk losing all the Search Engine Optimisation SEO from your old website, this could mean $1,000’s of dollars in SEO investment not to mention the money lost from business because you’re not showing up on the Search Engines.

When moving or redesigning your website you have to make sure the URLs on the main pages do not change and if they do make sure they redirect to the new URLs. If the links do change you will need to ensure that the old link redirects the user to the new link via a 301 redirect in the .htaccess file

We are driving deep now just to warn you if you are concerned about losing your SEO we can help you move over to Icewolf. 🧑‍💻 🤓 

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When your website shows up on Google Search Engine the Search Engine will store the old URLs when the links change the user will go to your old website and more than likely get a 404 error that will tell Google that this link is dead and will then remove it from the searches. So we need to tell Google that the page has moved to the new URL and it will update accordingly.

Diving deep

Okay well if you’re still reading let's have a look at what the URLs might look like, first we have the old link “/pages/contact-us” is changing to the new link “/contact”

Old link

https://yourwebsite.com/pages/contact-us

New link

https://yourwebsite.com/contact

The code (.htaccess)

Now that we’re identified there is a change with the URL with the contact page. We need to create the redirects in the .htaccess file. Most CMS’s like Icewolf will support redirects so you won’t have to edit your .htacces file.

Redirect 301 /pages/contact-us /contact

Moving to a new domain, this .htaccess file will need to sit on the old server where the old domain sits. 

Redirect 301 /pages/contact-us https://newdomain.com/contact

Redirect the whole website to the new domain

Redirect 301 / https://newdomain.com/

For temporary redirection, you can use 302 instead of 301.

I hope this helps your business, if you have any comments or questions please leave a comment below. If you new help building a new or existing website we’re here to help. Please contact us for a chat.