15 replies to this topic

[copywriter]

Hi!

I am NOT a code queen so I need help with this one, please.

I've changed the name of my company, and thus my URL. I don't want to abandon all my search engine rankings or links so I need a way to redirect visitors to the new site from the old site.

I tried the .htaccess file, but it only redirected the index page of my site. I need all the pages (or at the very least the 3 most popular ones) to redirect to the new site.

Anybody got any ideas? 'Cause I'm clueless!

THANKS!
Karon

[Jill]

For what it's worth, I told Karon how to create the .htaccess file and put the redirect code in. On my sites, it redirects EVERY page someone might type in from the old site. I am not sure why it doesn't do that for Karon, so that's what we're trying to figure out.

Does she actually have to put ALL the old URLs in the .htaccess file? I definitely don't do that with my redirected domain.

Jill

[Scottie]

Hey Karon-

Do you have a control panel where you can add 301 redirects? I know it's pretty simple in the ones I use to go in and input the old URL, then the new URL, and click the 301 Permanent box and it's done.

[copywriter]

It has a "redirection manager" but I don't know if that's for 301 or not.

I'll try to find out.

[dzinerbear]

A little over a month ago, I changed my file naming and some of my site structure. I, too, did not want to lose my good rankings and search engine work. I created an htaccess file and some permanent redirects. I did one of these lines for every single page I wanted redirected (thankfully, it was only 12 pages). Within a month, all of the old pages were out of Google, all of the new ones were in.

redirectPermanent /page_name.htm http://www.domainnam...name/index.html

Good luck
I hope it helps.
Dzinerbear

[copywriter]

So it has to be done for each page and not just the index?

[Jill]

So it has to be done for each page and not just the index?

This is what I'm saying, for my site it doesn't!

I just say:

redirect permanent / http://www.newurltoredirectto.com

[Mel]

Hi Karon
The redirect will get your viewers to your pages but it will not solve the problem with your inbound links, which will still point to your old site, thus PR and credit for anchor text in the links will be lost.

You need to contact all those who link to you and ask them to change the link to your new URL. Lots of work but the upside is that this is also an opportunity to have them set up their links to you with anchor text of your choosing.

[copywriter]

Yeah, Jill... I remember you said you didn't have to do each page. All I can figure is that something's different with the host, etc.

I got my answer back from my host and their redirect manager IS a 301 so I took care of that this morning.

Yes, Mel, I'm in the process of contacting those with links to the old site now and asking them to change to the new site. Not fun but necessary.

[Jill]

The redirect will get your viewers to your pages but it will not solve the problem with your inbound links, which will still point to your old site, thus PR and credit for anchor text in the links will be lost.

Mel, I'm not sure that is correct.

If you have a permanent redirect that works set on the URL, the PageRank and Link Pop will eventually get passed from the old to the new. They will be considered the same page.

At least that's how I understand it.

Jill

[copywriter]

Oh cool! I hope your understanding is right, Jill. Would LOVE not to have to contact every one.

[Jill]

Karon, I believe Debra even asked Daniel Dulitz from Google about this in SJ. We can check with her to be sure. But that was my understanding, and then I think she confirmed it with him.

Jill

[deborah2002]

If there's anyone out there who knows the answer to this, please speak up! My webmaster and I want to re-create our site from the ground up, but we don't want to lose all our inbound links.

Thanks to Karon for starting this thread so I wouldn't have to!

deb

[Mel]

Could be Jill, but I have seen several sites that lost thier PR and Link popularity when thry renamed the site and or the pages.

Could have been that they did not redirect properly, but intuitivly it seems to me that its going to have to be lots of work for Google to have to credit a link that says URL1 to URL2.

[Randy]

Didn't get her quick enough to help I see. Glad you're getting it sorted via the control panel Karon. As you correctly surmised servers can have different configurations, especially when you get into the differences between Windoze and *nix operating systems.

For future reference in case anybody needs it...

If the new site is going to have exactly the same directory structure and page file names and you happen to be running on an Apache server (Randy doesn't do Windoze :tooth: ) you can throw a ReWrite Condition into an .htaccess file and have each page on the old domain automatically redirected to the corresponding page on the new domain.

For a standard Apache setup it would look something like this...

rewriteEngine on
rewriteBase /
rewriteCond % {HTTP_HOST} www.olddomain.com$
rewriteRule ^(.+) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

That'll grab the filename of the old page and append it onto the end of the new domain's URL, and throw a 301 Permanent Redirect message out to the bots, and forward bots and visitors alike to the correct page. More complicated for sure, but useful if you need it in a pinch.

On the incoming links issue... This is just a common sense opinion, but I would be contacting those folks to have them change the link to the new domain. I find it hard to believe that since Google et al think www.domain.com and domain.com and domain.com/index.html are three completely different things that they'd be able to re-constitute links which are pointing at the old domain correctly. Could be...but I wouldn't risk it.

Randy