11 replies to this topic

[ephricon]

There was a little discussion about 301 redirects in another forum, but that sort of sprouted out of another topic... Anyhu, here's my question and situation...

The Situation
My largest client is a respected professional association that had a decent website up at URL1 (a certain URL the site had been at for a few years). The site has a PR of 6.

A few months ago we decided to redesign the site (it much needed it) and also move the site to a new domain name that we viewed much better as it is the acronym of their name and thus better suited as a domain than the old one.

Not only did the design and domain name change, but I am not running the site largely w/ asp and a database, whereas before it was completely static. Thus, all the filenames have changed (not just extensions but also file names). As of right now the new site only has a PR of 3.

The Need
Since there are many many high-quality, related links incoming to our website, and we are having trouble getting most people to change the links to the new website (people are busy, lazy, etc...) I'd like to find a way to pass on some of the PageRank to the new website. I still want the sites linking to us to change their links to our new URL, but realize that is just a long battle of nagging we'll have to keep up for a while to get even most of them to change.

From what I understand the 301 will help me to pass on some PageRank. Does this happen immediately on at the same pace as normal PageRank adjustments (may take a few months to see increase from many links)??? Also, can I "just" do this for the homepage - i.e. redirect URL1 to URL2 and not specify any file names? I do not want redirect any files since the whole navigation structure and everything has changed, plus there are still a couple of files on the old site that are still in use.

If I redirect URL1 to URL2 will URL1/page-name.asp still be accessable to those who click on a link directly to it? Or, will it also redirect every single file to the new URL????

Thanks ahead of time!!!

[SearchRank]

You should set up a 301 permanent redirect from URL1 to URL2. It will redirect entire site - no need to do it by file names. It will pass PR from URL1 to URL2 and most likely show up in next PR updates as they call it.

I would continue to try to get people to change links even though it is a pain. Persistence, persistence and then more persistence.

Also from what I have heard, Inktomi did not recognize 301 redirects as well as Google. This may not be the same for Yahoo who has now integrated Inktomi into its own crawler based engine but at any rate, you'll want to keep an eye out to make sure new domain gets included in Yahoo index as well.

Good luck!

[Randy]

Just to clarify since I think I may be reading the question differently than David...

If you do a base redirect in your .htaccess file something along the lines of:

redirect 301 / http://www.newdomain.com/

the entire site will be automatically redirected. Meaning if someone tries to go to www.olddomain/silly_page_name.html they will automatically be redirected to www.newdomain/silly_page_name.html.

In other words, a base 301 will attempt to connect them with the same page filename on the new domain as they requested on the old domain name. If the filename doesn't exist on the new server they're going to get a 404 error.

If I read your question right, that's what you're trying to avoid. Is that right Ephricon? Or am I totall mis-reading your question?

There are basically two ways around such a situation...

You can either perform 301 redirects on a page-by-page level on the old domain, pointing each page to the corresponding file over to the new domain, giving you the ultimate in control. Or you could do some advanced referrer detection with your 404 page on the domain. That would allow you to detect the old domain as the referring URL and drop those folks off at the main index page for the site.

The second option is easier to pull off, but the first option gives you a lot more control.

[ephricon]

In other words, a base 301 will attempt to connect them with the same page filename on the new domain as they requested on the old domain name. If the filename doesn't exist on the new server they're going to get a 404 error.

If I read your question right, that's what you're trying to avoid. Is that right Ephricon? Or am I totall mis-reading your question?

That's exactly right. Truth be told, I'm really interested in having two things accomplished:

- redirect users from the OLD home page to the NEW homepage
- try and maintain/transfer some of that nice PageRank from the OLD website (i.e. the homepage of the old website) to the new website (i.e. the homepage of the new website).

I imagine I might be set with simply putting a 301 redirect on OLD/index.asp and OLD/index.html (two homepages - one is a "this page has moved" and one is the original home page) to go to NEW URL. This sound like it would be advisable???

99% of our website visitors would enter via the homepage and not any other page (the site's main target is its repeat visitors who have it bookmarked or type in the URL).

In the case that someone might go directly to an OLD page on the OLD site, I'm fine with them just staying there. In fact I don't want someone at OLD/filename.html to be sent to NEW/filename. Chances are if they managed to get there w/o first going through the homepage than thats one of the two or three pages I want to keep up and located there for the time being.

Does just a 301 on the OLD index page (rather than the whole OLD URL which would transfer all page) to the NEW URL sound like the best method???

Thanks again everyone for your help!

[Randy]

Sounds reasonable to me as a start. You will most likely want to eventually do a redirect of the pages on the Old site to the New one, if for no other reason than to make it very clear which you view as the most important. My concern there is possible duplicate content, where the Old interior pages continue to rank and the New interior pages get excluded because of this.

At the very least, I'd establish a robots.txt on the Old site once the New one takes hold in the SERPs.

On the other hand, redirecting only the index pages should make it pretty simple for you to track down any incoming links going to your interior pages. Simply look at the server logs and see where Googlebot starts crawling from, then search out who is linking to that specific page.

[SanDiegoMedia]

And what would happen if you just changed the DNS information for the old domain name to point tot he new domain name???

[Jill]

And what would happen if you just changed the DNS information for the old domain name to point tot he new domain name???

Then you don't get to choose which one Google shows.

It's not a bad solution though and works for tons of sites.

Jill

[ephricon]

Then you don't get to choose which one Google shows.

Which is this case makes it a no-can-do. The client very much wants to market the new domain name and wants to cut ties with the old one. Thus, I want to transfer all search engine presence to the new domain (or reestablish if this is a more accurate word).

I think I'm going to just do a 301 for the old index page to the new index page and leave it at that. A few months from now when all the other operations on the old site are no longer needed (there are a couple of registration applications for events still working on the old site that need to stay there for a little while) then I'll just take the old one down. Hopefully I'll get some kick in PR from the old home page to the new one. Our PR 6 is sorely missed right now... Thankfully this site doesn't require a major SE presence....

[Minerva]

I'm looking at a similar situation. I'm (hopefully) going to be writing SEO copy for a new client, but he wants some general SEO advice. He's buying the URL and site of a #1 ranked site and plans to redirect from the #1 site to his own site, which has a better-worded URL. He doesn't care about the content from the #1 site (it's ranking so high because it has about 700 incoming links.)

Does he need to keep all the pages on the #1 site? There are hundreds. Should he keep the #1 site intact, and just do the redirect to his own site? Also, should be keep the #1 ranked site where it is - is it a problem to move it off whatever host its on? (He hasn't asked this, but I'm trying to think of everything.)

If I can get this answered for him, maybe I can get down to some writing!

Thanks,
Andrea

[Randy]

That's a tricky one Andrea. There are lots of variables to account for.

From what you describe it sounds as if your client is going to get rights to the entire site, not just the domain. First I'd make sure that getting access to all of the files on the current #1 site is part of the contract. Some things you just don't want to assume. If he gets that then Yes, he should have the right and ability to move that domain to any host server he wants to.

Frankly, I'm not sure I would toast the old domain. To begin with, only Google is going to pass along the link popularity with the use of a 301 redirect. Last time I checked a 301 isn't likely to give the same benefit with Yahoo!, MSN or any of the other search engines where backlinks are concerned.

Since that domain is most likely costing him a pretty penny I'm not sure I wouldn't develop the existing domain. That PR / LinkPop is hard to reproduce so I wouldn't be keen about the risk of losing it for any search engine without some pretty serious reasons for chancing it.

That said, if this is the route the client wants to take a 301 would at least help to transfer the PR to the new site while links are being corrected. For Google. In theory. I've never done it before, so I'm not 100% sure how Google would treat a domain that had recently changed ownership and has totally new content. All of that may be enough to trip some red flag inside Googleplex for all I know.

Anyway, you'll want to be a little careful with it if you set up full site 301 redirect. In essence, a full site 301 is going to try to send people to the exact same page on the new domain. For instance, if someone was trying to go to www.olddomain.com/file132.html, the 301 is going to redirect them to www.newdomain.com/file132.html.

You can see that it would be pretty easy for people to start getting a lot of Page Not Found errors. There is some advanced referrer detection stuff you can do with your 404 error on the new domain to help, but some thought will have to go into it. You could also simply mirror the filenames of the old domain on the new domain also. Assuming the file extension isn't going to need to be changed.

Ticklish to be sure. My best advice is to make sure a good plan is laid out anything gets changed.

[benc007]

Just to clarify since I think I may be reading the question differently than David...

If you do a base redirect in your .htaccess file something along the lines of:

redirect 301 / http://www.newdomain.com/

the entire site will be automatically redirected.  Meaning if someone tries to go to www.olddomain/silly_page_name.html they will automatically be redirected to www.newdomain/silly_page_name.html.

In other words, a base 301 will attempt to connect them with the same page filename on the new domain as they requested on the old domain name.  If the filename doesn't exist on the new server they're going to get a 404 error.

If I read your question right, that's what you're trying to avoid.  Is that right Ephricon?  Or am I totall mis-reading your question?

There are basically two ways around such a situation...

You can either perform 301 redirects on a page-by-page level on the old domain, pointing each page to the corresponding file over to the new domain, giving you the ultimate in control.  Or you could do some advanced referrer detection with your 404 page on the domain.  That would allow you to detect the old domain as the referring URL and drop those folks off at the main index page for the site.

The second option is easier to pull off, but the first option gives you a lot more control.

Randy,

I am using ASP on Windows and would like to do a 301 redirect for the entire site (from www.siteA.com to www.siteB.com)

However, I can't seem to get this to work using .htaccess.

Inside .htaccess:

redirect 301 / http://www.siteB.com

Please help. Thank you in advance.

[Randy]

Hi and welcome benc007 !

I assume from what you've said that your site is hosted on a IIS (Windows) box. The instructions above were for *nix hosted sites. IIS doesn't support .htaccess files. But it does give you another way to perform redirects.

I don't have any IIS boxes anymore, so I'm going to have to go from memory. Hopefully one of our IIS experts will swing by and correct any errors.

First, you need Admin access. If you don't have that simply tell your hosting company what you want to do and they'll take care of that for you. If you do have Admin access...

• Go into the server admin interface for www.siteA.com (Right click on My Computer and select Manage, then Tree/Service and Applicatins/Internet Information Service/www.siteA.com.)
• Right click on www.siteA.com.
• Under the Home Directory choose Redirect to another URL.
• Type in www.siteB.com

That should do it. Again, that's from memory. If I skipped a step someone with better IIS info please correct me!