From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from lists.gentoo.org (pigeon.gentoo.org [208.92.234.80]) by finch.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BDF4B13838B for ; Tue, 29 Sep 2015 20:39:47 +0000 (UTC) Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 651C021C040; Tue, 29 Sep 2015 20:39:41 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-wi0-f169.google.com (mail-wi0-f169.google.com [209.85.212.169]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 2836021C013 for ; Tue, 29 Sep 2015 20:39:40 +0000 (UTC) Received: by wicfx3 with SMTP id fx3so168173836wic.1 for ; Tue, 29 Sep 2015 13:39:38 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=subject:to:references:from:message-id:date:user-agent:mime-version :in-reply-to:content-type:content-transfer-encoding; bh=GmFGrOpzylxyjv/xOCzG9jTOVejw/vqu6KFg2+E8s+k=; b=HBJhuQa31ikGQJx7/H7zwGXqGB1KNP98L2Y7FQzQaMp8rAAWGvtwAyklks/2wEsIbx mVXZQ4wR/XljahxTsgr8pJ4JYROBV5/blGoZZlFLLg9sXQWRSithU2kDr2LzDK/BJZ8M /1q/XEFlmmfBeHfpzE2CO1x6dVKpBF/G56Do3sjNwizWKkVLSkk1E/pjMHN/pHRWgK7f K4tDOdora6EUp17REWSDJjwQokZqPLsXI59vasXTzs2Zzk3oo5BNo5mU8X+3VcSyZRkM S0aZz9zJjiFN4aU74DV7Ceau38dGBY1P+0QhR1bEHzfsqOy7zI/OP6FiAkw7b+UXjRBV B7Sw== X-Received: by 10.180.211.8 with SMTP id my8mr25850129wic.21.1443559178768; Tue, 29 Sep 2015 13:39:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [172.20.0.41] (105-237-149-222.access.mtnbusiness.co.za. [105.237.149.222]) by smtp.googlemail.com with ESMTPSA id g5sm360543wix.13.2015.09.29.13.39.36 for (version=TLSv1.2 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 bits=128/128); Tue, 29 Sep 2015 13:39:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Major site redesign, SEO, and 301 redirects To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org References: <560AEDFA.9000706@libertytrek.org> From: Alan McKinnon Message-ID: <560AF6ED.4010404@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2015 22:39:09 +0200 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/38.2.0 Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archives-Salt: 1be8a6a7-10ff-4469-b0ae-22e7844e29a8 X-Archives-Hash: 6f9b06dfb3ad7e9a8ef8f991f7614742 On 29/09/2015 22:19, J. Roeleveld wrote: > On 29 September 2015 22:00:58 CEST, Tanstaafl 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@gmail.com