6 replies to this topic

[siringo]

Firstly, sorry if this is not the correct forum for this post.

I haven't been keeping up with SEO trends etc for a while now as I've been building my business offline. However over the past 2 weeks I have started thinking about building a new online business selling XYZ.

Anyway, I thought I'd walk up to Google and ask them what web sites would show up on the first page of their results for the 3 main keyphrases I would use to promote my new XYZ web site and lo and behold, a site I built about 3 years ago based on XYZ comes in at number 2 for 2 of the phrases and 9 for the third.

With this in mind I want to obviously preserve these listings.

So, my problem is, this current site is with a host who is unreliable, poor support and so on and I'd like to move it to a new host I have in the country where I reside (Australia) which will also be the geographic location (Australia) I will be targetting with my new XYZ site.

So what are the risks with moving a site from a server based in the US to a server based in Australia?

Or, should I just leave it all as is, bearing in mind that I've done nothing to my current site for about 2 years, I've barely even looked at it during that time and maybe that should say to me that all that is done is all I need to do??????

I look forward to hearing what others think. Thanks in advance.

[Randy]

Since you're targeting the Australian market for XYZ the server move should have little or no negative effect. With a possible beneficial effect by both being an in country host and one that is more reliable.

[siringo]

Since you're targeting the Australian market for XYZ the server move should have little or no negative effect. With a possible beneficial effect by both being an in country host and one that is more reliable.

Is there any issue with the changing of IP addresses and Googles results? From memory there used to be some type of problem that could affect your rankings????

[Randy]

Nope. None of that at all anymore.


If you can you'll either want to leave the site up on the old server for a few days (a week tops) to allow for global DNS propagation. So for that week the site would technically be available in two places. Or you can simply point the local DNS at the old server over to the new server's IP number to force propagation, if you have the ability to edit the local DNS settings on the current server.

But it's not nearly the issue it once was. Over the last couple of years I see most propagation complete in under 48 hours. Many times in under 24. Even if you had a complete outage, this sort of brief outage is going to have zero effect on the search engines.

[Connie]

I don't think there will be any problem in changing IP address.

If I were gong to do this, I would upload the fies to the new address. Change the name serves to point to then new address.

Then put up a 301 redirect at the old address to point to the new address. Although most DNS will propagate in 72 hours I would leave the 301 in place for 30 days.

[Randy]

Just a quick caveat...

A 301 will not work on many shared hosting platforms. In order to do it you need to point to the IP number of the new server, not the web address. Pointing to the web address would leave you on the same local server since it thinks it is the only one there is for the domain in question.

And pointing to the IP number of the new server means the new server has to be set up to answer correctly and deliver the correct site by the IP number. On shared hosting this is often not the case. If more than one site shares the IP number they could end up at the wrong site, because chances are another is set as the default domain for the IP number, or none is set. Even if it did work you'd want to set up a 2nd 301 redirect on the new server to take the IP-only hits and convert them back into domain name hits.

I'd leave the 301 out of the process myself. It just introduces new potential issues, some of which you'll have no control over.

Either put it up in both places, change the nameservers and wait. Or put it up in both places, edit the DNS settings on the old server to point to the new and wait a bit less. Either way you're talking about a matter of days at best.

Also, do make sure you physically turn off or delete the domain on the old server before leaving it. Not that it should matter, but servers are normally configured to publicize their local DNS. There is no reason to have the old server still advertising that it hosts a domain after its moved.

[siringo]

Thanks for the replies and advice, it looks like I'm in business then. Thanks again.