htaccess hell - brightonseo 2016

@chrisgreen87@StrategiQ

#BrightonSEO2nd September 2016


.htaccess Hell Managing a Migration When There’s

No Easy Answer



A site migration Possibly the most important moment in a

website’s life-cycle



Done well, a new site can launch without hitch



Done badly, all your hard work will go down the



On small sites this can be really easy



On small sites this can be really easyOn large sites... ?



That doesn’t mean you can just shrug it off

(don’t be lazy)



It’s make or break for your new website

(I really mean it, don’t be lazy)



In this presentation I’ll show you



How to scope the size of the redirect challenge



How to prioritise redirects



Tactics to help map them(less painfully - at least)



“Best-case” matching when there’s no exact



Testing redirects pre & post launch



Keeping organised



Scoping the size of the redirect trouble



1) Crawl your website



2) Crawl any sitemaps



3) Export landing page URLs from GA



If the 5,000 row limit is too much of a pain - try http://bit.ly/analytics-edge

http://bit.ly/analytics-edge



4) Extract URLs from logs



Or maybe you can be adventurous and use command line

This resource rocks, thanks Oliver Mason!-> http://bit.ly/log-command-line

http://bit.ly/log-command-line



5) Scrape Google(but be nice)



“But wait, this sounds a right faff!”

(I thought I told you not to be lazy)



Prioritising redirects



1) Common-sense - top level pages



2) Top-ranking pages



3) Top trafficked pages



4) Most crawled pages (from log files)



5) … and if possible everything else



Mapping redirects



1) Directory rewrites



In .htaccess for example:

RewriteRule ^old-blog/(.*)$ /new-blog/$1 [R=301,NC,L]

www.domain.com/old-blog/best-post-evar301s to

www.domain.com/new-blog/best-post-evar

http://www.domain.com/old-blog/best-post-evar




http://www.domain.com/new-blog/best-post-evar







Some more handy .htaccess rules?

http://bit.ly/aleyda-htaccess





That’s the easy part over and done with!



2) Old-to-new post/ product matching



Can be done in many different ways - depends on commonalities:- Post/Product ID

- Post/Product Name- Post/Product Title- URL Key Matching

etc...



For example:

http://bit.ly/ecom-redirect-drive





Make friends with a developer

(Seriously - buy them a drink and everything!)



But that’s not a get out of jail free card!



3) Manually match them



This is up to you to do the hard work…

Filters are your friend too



Filter your URLs, look for:

- Specific keywords- Directories- Parameters



“Best case” matching



1) Don’t just over-redirect to the homepage or top-level

categories

(This leads into soft 404s!)



Don’t just take my word for it Ask Glenn Gabe

http://bit.ly/soft-404s





2) Match to the closest available example



3) If there’s no suitable alternative, don’t be afraid to

let it drop

(if it’s important and there’s no alternative, you’re doing it wrong!)



Redirect implementation?

Assuming that you’re using apache - http://bit.ly/htaccess-for-seos

http://bit.ly/htaccess-for-seos

http://bit.ly/htaccess-for-seos



Redirect testing



1) Modify redirects to “work” on staging/dev



Change the hostname to dev/staging

(change back before launch though!)



2) Crawl, crawl & crawl again!



Change host on your old list of redirects & crawl



Pro tip:

Just because there’s a 301 response, doesn’t mean it’s the right destination!



3) Test again after launch



Make sure nothing breaks after!



Keeping organised



1) Excel/google docs is your friend



2) Include 301 mapping into your sitemap - start early!

http://bit.ly/sitemap-redirect-template





3) Learn to Vlookup!

http://bit.ly/vlookup-beginners





4) Save often, split your workbook if things get too

heavy



To recap...



It takes time but it’s worth it!



Properly scope the size of the problem



Prioritise - more is better, but it has to stop somewhere



Map redirects intelligently - pattern or directory match where you can



Make friends with a developer!



Test, test & test again



Download this, it’ll helphttp://bit.ly/sitemap-redirect-template





Thank you.@chrisgreen87

http://bit.ly/htaccess-hell



htaccess hell - brightonseo 2016

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