Quote:
Originally Posted by doomer  Here's a scenario for you guys:
I have a self-hosted ecommerce site that is linked to an old limited account, so there's no way to attach a new Paypal account without them linking and banning the new account. I have too much is invested in the domain (age/SEO) to change it.
Currently I am accepting orders then manually sending paypal requests to customers so that the paypal API<->website connection isn't involved at all. It works but it's a crude method and requires manual intervention. Has anyone found a better way to do this programmatically (woocommerce specifically)? I understand some custom dev may be required.
And before anyone asks, I am accepting CCs using a merchant account on my site but many still prefer Paypal.
Any tips/advice appreciated. |
I used to work as a technical SEO for an agency (well, several over the years!).
SEO value can be passed quite well by a 301 redirect IF you do it properly (new site is clone of old, 301 page-to-page, run Screaming Frog crawls to check they work well, set-up ahrefs or similar to monitor rankings of both sites to spot for migration, and run a check (frog crawl) of not just the site's URLs, but a scrape of the site
omain.com command in Google to make sure all Google-indexed pages (including any old pages etc) have been 301'd as well).
It's a bit of work yes, but really... it works and could solve your problem. ESPECIALLY if you were to buy a domain name very similar (different TLD like a .com instead of .net etc, or a small character change, going from singular word to plural or similar - easier on the branding).
In fact, you could couple this with some marketing and push a branding change promo email to all customers, offering a 5% discount code as a 'celebration' of the branding update - make them feel special for being a loyal customer etc, but set it as a time-limited coupon code for the special 'celebration'.
This would:
1) Over a few days to weeks, whilst the old site ranked still, visitors would be instantly redirected to the new site (and so long as you handled the migration the right way, their logins etc would work fine, as would customer history)
2) After a few days to weeks, Google would take heed of the 301 redirects and rank the new domain anyway
3) You'd use it as an opportunity to drive extra sales with the 5% off 'celebration' coupon to existing customers... mitigating any concerns about lost sales.
4) Also - push out some press releases about the branding changes, too... Be sure to link to the OLD domain as part of it (simply done as it fits the PR topic "xyz.com site has rebranded and moved to yzx.com site"
NOTE: Press releases are pretty **** for SEO backlinks these days... low value - HOWEVER! Linking to the old (and new) sites would help Google re-crawl the old site and find the 301 redirects
However this is subject to you using an ecom software that allows an easy migration.
But - yer, SEO value being a reason for not changing domains? nah - way's around that. Have had clients migrate sites with multiple £million revenue, so it really, REALLY is not a bad thing to do and can be GOOD, if handled right and if you take opportunity from the marketing potential (coupons, press release, social media push about the rebrand, even a competition to 'celebrate' the rebrand... a competition that get's you more opt-ins for you marketing list from everyone that enters
Just a few thoughts.
ONE last word of caution though - have also seen sites screw-up redirecting domains and plummet from the rankings in G for WEEKS (and this was another multi £m revenue business... a client's competitor at the time! So was kinda funny... Just to say PLANNING and knowing your shizzle is important, as are the S Frog crawls of both the old URLs, new domain, and scraped site
omain.com rankings in Google. Plus other crawls too ideally.
BUT - if planned well should only take 2 or 3 days MAX to actually PLAN and DO the redirects & migration.
Hope that helps
Stealth workflow for ecommerce site? 
Re: Stealth workflow for ecommerce site? 
