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

[J. Roeleveld]

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.

--
Joost 


-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.