In a recent move, Google has released some useful guidelines to make site moves much easier for webmasters. Google’s highly descriptive advice comes to the aid of site administrators by giving a comprehensive coverage on the fundamentals of moving a site. In addition, the search engine giant has also spoken about addressing the mobile devices’ needs and also regarding responsive design. Specifically, Google has implied that it is much useful to use the 302 redirect while moving from a mobile compatible design to a responsive or dynamic serving web design. In answering the query of a Google+ user, the company has told that it has recommended 302 since the implication is that the move might not be permanent.
Moving a site is a highly tricky job that most might not be aware. The reason is that if not done properly, it could have severely destructive results on the website. Therefore, site administrators need to do a careful job in this regard. There are a few best practices that webmasters need to implement to protect the website traffic and rankings during the website redesigning process.
Redesigning a site at some point is inevitable and usually follows several considerations and requirements. The web users of today are highly savvy and sleek. They want everything at the reach of a single click and ensuring this is a highly challenging job. There are several ends that you will have to meet in the process and a lot is there to be accomplished in these lines demanding a significant amount of effort. However, with a proper planning, you can really hope to do a good job. Otherwise, you will have to go through sleepless nights grieving on the loss of your hard earned money, downtime and the ranks besides all the associated issues and risks.
A number of accomplished webmasters have learnt the fundamentals of this job after a hard work and you can benefit a lot from their advice and experience. There are few tips that can guide you on moving your site without much loss and help you improve your work. After all, you need to achieve this task unscathed while maximizing the benefits.
It is very important that while moving a site you try not to change the URL. This means that even if you need to go to a new hosting provider or would like to move to a new platform, you may try keeping the same old URL intact. If you have to movie a site with totally new URLs, Google has given out the detailed guidelines on how to map the old URLs to the new ones. It is also equally important to fix any stragglers that you have missed out during the transition.
Google has also released guidelines on dealing with websites that have different URLs for mobile users and desktop users. These guidelines have stressed on the advantages of using a responsive website design. While moving the site, use Google’s address change tool within Google’s Webmaster tools. You must verify both the sites and domains. These steps will help you mitigate the risks to a great extent while moving a site.