: Replace website with newly redesigned and developed site without effecting SEO We are currently finishing off a development site dev.example.com for a business who currently have a website that

@Barnes591

Your hosting company gave you good idea about redirection (301).

Example:

Website with old content:


example.com/page-1.html
example.com/page-2.html


Website with new pages:


example.com/new-page-1.html
example.com/new-page-2.html


Assuming your page-1.html and new-page-1.html have the same content with new structure, same might be the situation for other URLs.

Now, in this situation, you need to make a list of old URLs and redirect (301 Permanent redirection) old URLs to its respective new ones. So, in above scenario page-1.html should be redirected to new-page-1.html

There will be no ranking impact if you do this. You may notice minor fluctuation but it should recover very quickly.

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@Harper822

We want to display all the content from the dev site on the main site's domain...


Sounds like a bad idea. If you're working on the dev site and you want to see it on the main site at the same time, then guests will wonder what is happening to the site when they try to browse the same set of URLs more than once. This may also confuse search engines since they will have different sets of content for the same URL. If you go this route then you may be (accidentally) violating Google webmaster guidelines because of your frequently changing content.


What would be the best way to do this?


Keep the domains separate. Let guests see the currently running main site as-is and when you are happy with the new version of the site (on the dev domain) then copy all files to the new domain folders all at once at the time the fewest number of people will visit your site. It's all the better if the copy is done in one operation. And if the changes are small (such as modifying a few paragraphs on a dozen pages), then the whole upload operation should complete in a matter of seconds. This will limit the downtime and eliminate confusion guests may experience when they visit your site.

If when you're done, you see any issues listed about your website with Google Search Console or the like, then wait a couple days and Google will get the drift.

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