Weekly SEO news: 23 July 2019
Welcome to the latest issue of our newsletter!

Here are the latest website promotion and Internet marketing tips for you.

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Andre Voget, Johannes Selbach, Axandra CEO

1. Google: how to migrate your website correctly to a new URL structure

Sometimes, you have to change the URL of your existing pages. For example, URLs might change from HTTP to HTTPS. It can also be that your domain name changes from old.com to new.com, or that your new content management system (CMS) uses a new URL structure (example.com/keyword instead of example.com/page.php?id=123).

How to migrate your website

How to migrate your website

Google has some recommendations if you want to migrate your old website to a new URL structure:

  • You can move your website in sections. You do not have to move everything together.
  • Redirecting your old URLs with a 301 or 302 redirect does not cause a loss in PageRank (you should use a 301 redirect if you redirect the URLs permanently).
  • Prepare a URL mapping from the current URLs to their corresponding new format.
  • Prepare the new site and test it thoroughly.
  • HTTPS sites receive a small ranking boost, but don't expect a visible change. Google uses HTTPS as a positive ranking signal. This signal is one among many others, and currently carries less weight than high-quality site content.
Check these points before you switch your URLs.

How long does it take to migrate your website?

Google's John Mueller said that site migrations take a few days if you do everything correctly.

"In the past it was definitely the case that [a site migration] was more visible in that you would move to a new domain and it would take several months for everything to settle down.

Nowadays our systems are pretty good in that if you move to a new domain, you follow all of the steps in our Help Center then sometimes within a day or two things will just switch over and you'll see pretty much no change with regards to search."

John Mueller also says that you should be careful:

"Any domain migration, a bigger change of URLs within a website, are always a scary situation for me still. I would really be careful about what you do there and make sure that you really follow step by step the Help Center guides. [...]

If you do everything right, a domain migration is just a matter of a day or so and everything will look really effortlessly. But there are lots of ways that you can do things wrong and there are lots of other types of migrations that you can do which do end up taking a much longer time."

You can view John Muellers statement here.

Optimize your web pages now

Many factors influence the position of your web pages on Google. Even if you do not migrate your website, you should make sure that your web pages offer everything that Google needs. The website audit tool in SEOprofiler and the Top 10 Optimizer tool in SEOprofiler help you to make sure that your web pages get high rankings.

Optimize your pages

2. Internet marketing news of the week

Google Google and the case of mistaken identity

"Apparently, whoever was reviewing the verification requests did not bother to compare my selfie or the biographical information provided by my social profiles to images and biographical information [...]  it seems that anybody with the same name can be granted access to edit your online reputation."


Former Google engineer: Google hasn't used [the old] PageRank since 2006

"They replaced it in 2006 with an algorithm that gives approximately-similar results but is significantly faster to compute. The replacement algorithm is the number that's been reported in the toolbar, and what Google claims as PageRank (it even has a similar name, and so Google's claim isn't technically incorrect)."

John MuellerGoogle: It’s okay to use pseudonyms as author names

"Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that it’s okay to use a pseudonym if you do not want to use your real name as an author name on your website. According to John Mueller, Google does not judge the ‘real-ness’ of author names."


Local SEOs say Google My Business suspension issues not fixed

"The other day we reported that the Google My Business issues were reportedly fixed according to Google. Well, many local SEOs and businesses are saying this is not true. Google told Greg Sterling 'all listings that were not visible have been restored.' That might not be 100% true."


+++ SEARCH +++ ENGINE +++ NEWS +++ TICKER +++

  • Deleted Google MyBusiness reviews probably won't come back.
  • DuckDuckGo expands use of Apple Maps for enhanced search with the same commitment to privacy.
  • A feisty Google adversary tests how much people care about privacy.
  • Google is starting to back off from China, a U.S. senator says.
  • Google banned major Chinese app developer CooTek from the Play Store and its ad platforms.
  • Why Google dropped Bing Discover pages from its index.

3. Previous articles

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