Moving Domain - Need Advice

roam_dx · #1 (**permalink**) 01-10-2005, 03:34 AM

Hi guys, need help getting out of a slight jam. I know this topic has been discussed very often here and I went through a number of posts but couldn't find a firm solution that I should go with. So if someone could even direct me to the right post, it would be much appreciated...

Ok, the situation -

A few months ago I launched a website as a result of boredom and putting to good use some work I had done for a client and not been paid for, I also had a domain which wasn't being used. This site has only now started showing up in search engines and has just a few days ago been fully indexed by google. The issue i'm facing is that the domain is totally mismatched to the content of the website. So now I have gotten us a better suited name and redesigned the whole website to work better(IMHO).

My Worry -

As I mentioned all the pages have only just been indexed and I don't want to loose the traffic to the domain or the keyword traffic to the sub pages. How should I go about redirecting the site?? I'm on linux servers.

Should I...
...redirect the top level domain and let the search engines figure out the rest, insert a 404 with a link maybe and a google search box for the new domain(it will of course be a while before the new domain is indexed, months maybe from what I read somewhere).

Or, should I redirect the domain and every individual page of the current website to the corresponding page on the new domain(is this possible, guess i'll need to mess with the .htaccess for this), if so could someone tell what is the most SE friendly way to do it on a linux server, if it is really required.

Pretty confused right now on how to safely move the website and I can't let it carry on the way it is currently setup. Please help, any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks
Deep

minstrel · #2 (**permalink**) 01-10-2005, 10:35 AM

Quote:

Or, should I redirect the domain and every individual page of the current website to the corresponding page on the new domain(is this possible, guess i'll need to mess with the .htaccess for this), if so could someone tell what is the most SE friendly way to do it on a linux server, if it is really required.

You can do a whole site redirect using .htaccess (see below). Alternatively, you can redirect each individual page with a displayed message for human visitors that the page has been moved using the "refresh" meta tag (see below). Either way, if there are a lot of backlinks to the site or to individual pages on the site, you will want to contact the webmasters of the pages in question and ask them to update the links.

Quote:

Search engine friendly redirect (301 redirect)
There are many types of redirect but some methods can be considered 'trickery' by the search engines simply because they can be used to fool the search engine by some people. The main search engine in question is Google, and it considers a 301 redirect to be the proper redirect, because it tells the search engine that the content that it expected to get at site A has permanently moved to site B therefore it will be redirected there.

A 301 redirect is executed server-side which means that the visitor is never aware that they have been redirected, there is no time delay like with javascript

301 redirect in PHP
To use the following PHP code you must change the file extension of the file you will be using to index.php instead of index.html.

Now put the following code into your new index.php page, put ONLY this code, no need for <head>, <body> or any other tags.

Change www.newdomain.com/page.html to the url the page will be redirecting to

Code:

<?php
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently"); 
header("Location: http://www.newdomain.com/page.html"); 
exit(); 
?>

301 redirect in ASP (only microsoft web servers)
[code]To use the following ASP code you must change the file extension of the file you will be using to default.asp instead of default.html.

Now put the following code into your new default.asp page, put ONLY this code, no need for <head>, <body> or any other tags.

Change www.newdomain.com/page.html to the url the page will be redirecting to

Code:

<%
response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently"
response.addheader "location", "http://www.newdomain.com/page.html"
response.end
%>

301 redirect through mod-rewrite in your .htaccess file
This is by far the best 301 redirect, new to .htaccess? go over to the .htaccess tutorial to learn more about it.

OK here's how you make a .htaccess file and put mod_rewrite in it:

Open up notepad (or a text editor in which you can save in plain text) and then put the following code in it

Code:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Replace newdomain with the domain name you want to redirect to

Save it with any name, upload it your your server and then rename it to .htaccess, with the "." in front.

Changing the domain's nameservers to point to the new url
Another safe way to get an old/second domain to go to a different hosting account/website is to park the old domain name and change its nameservers to point it to the new one.

Your host will provide you with these nameservers, and will look something like ns1.domain.com, there's usually two.

Log in to your control panel at the registrar where you bought the domain and there will be a menu option to change the nameservers, enter the new nameservers, hit save

Enter your hosting control panel for the website the domain will be pointing to and you will need to add the domain as a parked domain, under the setting of the same name

Wait for the new settings to propagate (take effect) anywhere up to 48 hours, and it should redirect to the other website no problems

Note: this is modified from something I found on the net a while back and, unsually for me, I neglected to save the URL in my local text file. If anyone knows the source, please let me know so I can credit the author.

bhartzer · #3 (**permalink**) 01-10-2005, 11:46 AM

I would redirect the entire domain using a 301 Permanent Redirect. Then check your backlinks and notify everyone you can that you have switched domains.

If you have any further questions, you can also see what Google says by looking at item 4 on that page.

When you're ready to make the change, follow the instructions by minstrel. Since you're on a unix server, a simple redirect in the .htaccess file will do just fine.

roam_dx · #4 (**permalink**) 01-10-2005, 02:49 PM

Hi minstrel, bhartzer,

Thanks for that list minstrel, it's a lifesaver, just what I was looking for. I think it all seems quite straight forward even though I am new to these web hosting functions, I have now got some temp domains setup where I practice this stuff and then apply them to the live sites ;).

On one of these test sites today from my cPanel I used a redirect function they have built in with two options temporary or permanent - I chose the permanent redirect, Im assuming it's a 301, how do you tell??

I redirected the domain.com and each page individually to the corresponding one on the new site, it seems to work perfect, I hope it is safe SE wise, I could go about doing it manually using one of the options in the list, but I am assuming that this basically the same thing. I'll set up a sample and post it here, would appreciate advice, if someones used this function in the Linux cPanel before and can tell me it worked for them, that would be fantastic...

Quote:

A 301 redirect is executed server-side which means that the visitor is never aware that they have been redirected, there is no time delay like with javascript

...there doesn't seem to be a time delay in the method I am using.

Thankfully that domain has no backlinks yet, none that I know of, although the sudden spurt in traffic lately *Knocks hard on the wood* makes me wonder if im missing something. There are a few cross links between sites I manage, primarily so that search engines can find the newer sites. I think it does more harm than good, but will do for now. But no link backs to update, thank god for small mercies, that's always a tiresome undertaking.

Thanks for all the tips,
Deep

minstrel · #5 (**permalink**) 01-10-2005, 02:59 PM

Yes.

301 = permanent redirect
302 = temporary redirect

and the permanent one is what you want.

roam_dx · #6 (**permalink**) 01-11-2005, 03:25 AM

thanks minstrel,

looks like ive got it right, keeping my fingers crossed.

vlus · #7 (**permalink**) 02-05-2005, 10:10 AM

Hello and thank you for a very informative post! Even after all that explanation, I am still left needing one or two clarifications. This is mostly because cPanel does NOT leave me with an .htaccess file that looks like the recommended syntax.

I first redirected my pages using the Redirect Feature of my cPane*l. I chose Permanent, which I presumed is a 301. However, I just viewed my .htaccess file and it reads as fol*lows:

Code:

RedirectMatch permanent ^/home.shtml$ 
http://www.web-hostess.com/reliable-...sting-home.htm

From what I've been reading, it SHOULD read more like:

Code:

redirect 301 /home.shtml 
http://www.web-hostess.com/reliable-...sting-home.htm

My first question... IS there a difference between the two v*ersion above as far as Google is concerned? As you can see, there is no mention of '301' in the version that cPanel created.

Second, the version that cPanel created included some extra characters that are not present in what seems to be the recommended syntax. What is the carat and dollar sign for, that cPanel p*ut in
their version of the code, that is not in the second version of th*e code.

Do I need the carat and dollar sign? Am I better off not using the cPanel redirect feature and just doing it manually?

Followup:
I changed the page names on a few page names and did the cPanel redirect about 10 days ago, but my prior page PR of 4 has not ported over to the new page name, hence I have stopped making the changes to other pages until I figure out what to do so all my hard work to get to PR4 is not lost.

Thanks for you guidance.
Vic
http://www.web-hostess.com