Re: [gentoo-user] Major site redesign, SEO, and 301 redirects

[Alan McKinnon]

On 29/09/2015 22:19, J. Roeleveld wrote:
> On 29 September 2015 22:00:58 CEST, Tanstaafl <tanstaafl@×××××××××××.org> wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I am not a web (or SEO) guy, but I manage our DNS and have for a long
>> time.
>>
>> The boss has contracted with a web development company to do a full
>> redesign of our website.
>
> Good luck with that. Hope you found a good company. :)
>
>> Our website has hundreds of thousands of pages, and years of SEO behind
>> it. The guys who was her until recently was adamant that we must be
>> very
>> carefl with the redesign so as not to totally break SEO, and possibly
>> getting blacklisted by Google.
>
> I never did anything with SEO. Would a mistake with that really get a site blacklisted?
>
>> The web developers are insisting that they need full access to our DNS
>> (hosted by DNSMadeEasy), and the only reason I can think of for this is
>> they plan on setting up HTTP redirects (DNSMadeEasy equivalent of a 301
>> redirect) for these pages - but hundreds of thousands of them?
>
> Redirects with DNS?
> I can only think of adding subdomains (like about.example.com or similar)
>
>> Wouldn't this be better done at the web server level? Or am I just
>> ignorant?
>
> Page redirects are, afaik, only possible with a webserver. They are part of the HTTP protocol.
>
>> Would love to hear experiences (good and bad), and a recommendation for
>> what I should do.
>
> I would ask them what they actually want to achieve. Don't forget that your email and all other services are dependent of the DNS settings.
> I can't think of many companies allowing a supplier for a website full access to a different part of the infrastructure.
>
> Most companies I deal with wouldn't even let the people responsible for the databases to reconfigure the storage for said database directly.

I agree with Joost, needing access to all your DNS is off-the-wall. Any
changes they need done, and they will be few, can be given to you as a
support ticket for action just like everyone else gets to do.

I would also have them specify exactly in their proposal what they
intend to do, with full engineering. Any sane service provider will do
that in their tender, and yours looks like a rather big tender.

Lastly, get a second opinion of the changes they make. SEO tweaks can
very easily get you blacklisted on search engines and a lot of methods
out there are interpreted by Google as being dodgy.


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@×××××.com