Question

Trying to figure out the best way to do redirects on a messed up domain migration. Relatively new client moved their domain a year ago, let's say old domain was mysite. com new one is site. com. At that point they just migrated to the new domain. This was not done correctly, they didn't properly re-direct old url's to new ones. Then they also go a brand new site and the 301's weren't necessarily done properly here either. They had some posts that were ranking well, that fell off a cliff because they didn't do the proper redirects. So for example there was a post lets call it mysite. com/2017/weird/ (old domain) that they just re-created on site. com (new domain) so the site. com, new url on site. com is site. com/2017/weird/ Then when they got the new site they just re-uploaded the post again so the URL is now site. com/2019/weird/ So mysite. com/2017/weird/ wasn't redirected to site. com/2017/weird/ and site. com/2017/weird/ wasn't re-directed to site. com/2019/weird/ mysite. com/2017/weird/ used to get 850 visits a month site. com/2019/weird/ only gets 50 a month I'd like to set up the proper redirects from both mysite. com/2017/weird/ and site. com/2017/weird/ to site. com/2019/weird/ My question is, what is the best way to do it or is it possible? site. com now lives on kinsta. For mysite. com (The old domain) the website install no longer exists. The domain is on Kinsta. Can I set up re-directs for a site that no longer exists if I still have control over the domain?  

Answer 1

You have to have server accessibility to do the 301's. You would want to do 2 redirects to avoid chains. Mysite. com/2017/weird to site. com/2019/wired Site. com/2017/weird to Site. com/2019/weird Basically, both old pages redirect to the new page with a single hop.  

Answer 2

I think I would just canonicalize the old URLs on both prior sites to the new URLs and forget about it. If the sites don't exist then use the Google Search Console site move tool. Otherwise, just redirect everything at the domain level.