Having an active website is critical for healthcare digital marketing but sometimes you may need to take down your website for some reason or other. Many businesses are hesitant to turn off the server for a long period of concerned that they will experience a drop in Google ranking. But Google’s John Muller suggests some of the tips to handle long site closure.
John Mueller, a Webmaster Trend Analyst at Google, suggests three ways by which you can handle how such a situation.
- Block function of cart: If you want to prevent users from buying any medical products or services, the first step is to stop the function of the cart. This is one of the most commonly used methods.
- Switch off the entire website for a specific period of time: This is a practical option if you want to block your website. This method also becomes useful when it comes to moving your server to a different data centre.
- Show pop-ups or an interstitial saying that the site is offline today: If such an interstitial is shown, you need to make sure that the server returns a 503 HTTP result code (service unavailable). This will ensure that Google does not index the temporary content that is shown to users. In the absence of the 503 code, Google will index the interstitial as your website content.
When you are turning off the website, consider these tips also:
- The first step is to set your DNS (Domain Name System) TTL (Time to Live) to a low time (e.g. 5 minutes) a few days in advance.
- Change your DNS to the temporary server’s IP address
- Take the main server offline once all requests shift to the temporary server
- Once ready, bring your main server online again
- Switch DNS back to the main server’s IP address
- Change the DNS TTL back to normal.
You can efficiently handle a temporary shutdown of your website with the support of a reliable healthcare search engine optimization service. Professional healthcare search engine optimization personnel will ensure that the planned closure of your website goes smoothly without any drop in Google ranking.
