Q and A: How do I move my site without losing rankings?

Dear Kalena...

I am having trouble with my "advanced access" website. The customer service has become horrible. They are very rude. I am thinking of moving my site (of course, I would have to redesign because I am using their template) but I own the domain name. I have high rankings on google so I am afraid to lose ranking. Is there a way to change my website design and webmaster without losing ranking?

Teri

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Teri

I'm not familiar with "Advanced Access", but I'm assuming this is some type of hosted Content Management System you use to edit your site with? Looking briefly at your site, I believe it is. And it looks as though most of the content is actually hosted on the AA site and not on your own domain. Don't be afraid to move your site if you are getting lousy service.

In terms of ranking, I think you'd actually be better off by moving your site content and domain to full hosting elsewhere. Your new host should be able to advise on making the DNS switch etc. You'll need to download all your existing site content and any images or files that are hosted on AA but referenced in your site. Of if they own the template you are using, simply keep a copy of all the text content and pay someone else to create a simple design for you based on the same content.

Provided you keep the same page content, keywords, page titles, META tags etc, you shouldn't lose any Google rankings. In fact, your rankings might even improve as you'll be referencing all your images and files etc on your own domain instead of somebody else's. If your page URLs change during the redesign, you'll need to make sure that the old pages are redirected to the new ones via 301 redirects so you don't lose traffic or existing rankings for those pages. There are plenty of posts on this blog to help you with that - simply click on 301 redirects under the Q and A labels. Best of luck!


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Q and A: How do I implement 301 redirects for individual pages?

Dear Kalena...

We are re-designing our web site and about 20 percent of our pages will be moved from their existing file locations. I have been reading on your site about using 301s to achieve this. We are planning to use a 301. But instead of using it in an .htaccess file we are going to include it within the HTML code of individual pages before the header. I know of no other way to do it except in meta form. If we do it in .htacces then won't it redirect all of our website? Is that ok or do you recommend using them in another way? Do you have specific instructions that you recommend for using them?

Chris

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Chris

Don't ever use META Redirects! In my experience, they are the kiss of death as far as search engines go. If your whole domain was moving, you could use mod_rewrite, but as you only need to redirect certain pages, you'll need to use 301s in your .htaccess file. The way to do this is as follows:

1) Add this line to your .htaccess file:

Redirect permanent /oldpage.html http://www.mydomain.com/newpage.html

You'll need to replace mydomain.com with your actual domain name so when the visitor types in http://www.mydomain.com/myoldpage.html, they will be automatically redirected to http://www.mydomain.com/mynewpage.html.

2) If you've renamed an entire directory, you can use one redirect line to affect all pages within the directory:

Redirect permanent /olddirectory http://www.mydomain.com/newdirectory/

Note that the old page or directory is specified using the system path relative to your www directory, while the new page or directory is specified by the absolute URL.

This online tutorial takes you through the method step-by-step. There is another .htaccess tutorial here if you prefer it. Some hosting control panels allow you to do this via a simple interface titled "redirects" where you type in each URL to be moved and the URL where you want it redirected to.

Google has made one or two posts that confirm that 301s via .htaccess are their preferred method for informing Googlebot that your page location has changed, so I highly recommend you take their advice.


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Q and A: What can I do to improve the rank of my regional domain on Google.com?

Dear Kalena...

My question is on regional google sites. I have a .com.au and rank well on google.com.au when selecting 'search web' and 'search australian sites' but my rank on google.com is very bad. I would have assumed that the results for google.com and google.com.au 'search the web' would have been the same? What can I do to improve my google.com rank, perhaps I could register a .com and point it to my .com.au? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated, thanks for offering this service by the way :)

Tim

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Tim

First up, never assume anything with Google. Secondly, search engines use a few different methods to determine a site's country of origin. Here are just two:

1) IP address the site resides on (physical location of host servers)
2) Domain extension

The physical location of the server that stores your site can have an impact on how search engines treat your site. Even if your site is hosted by an Australian firm, if they use server space located in another country, that is usually the country search engines will associate with your site. Check with your host about server location if this is an issue for you.

Now about your specific example - think about who uses Google.com.au - the primary users are from Australia, correct? So why would Google show the same results to Australian users that they would show to users of Google.com? They (correctly) assume that Australians want to see results that are relevant to them. So Google naturally gives preference to sites with a .com.au domain extension or sites that are hosted in Australia for both regional searches and "search the web" searches on Google.com.au.

Not only that, but Google uses IP detection to determine a searcher's geographical location and present results they determine relevant for persons in that location. How else do you think they decide what AdWords ads to show to different searchers? Advertisers request their ads to be shown to specific regions, countries or towns, so Google have a highly sophisticated algorithm to make sure this happens automatically.

If it is really vital that your site be shown more prominently on Google.com, I would suggest moving your site to a .com domain, on a server located in the US. You could then 301 redirect your .com.au domain to the .com. Pointing a .com to a .com.au won't do anything because you are still instructing bots that the .com.au site is your primary domain. I would really only consider switching domains if your major market is the US, the Australian market is relatively unimportant to you and you are happy to lose visibility in Google.com.au, which is what would inevitably happen.

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Q and A: Why doesn't my new Flash site rank as well as my old non-Flash site?

Dear Kalena...

Hi there - thanks for your fabulous newsletter and advice. I am doing some research on my friend's site, www.nolastudio.com.au (a Flash site). It used to be mosaicmadness.com.au (html site) which now redirects to nolastudio. Since the change, her rankings have dropped. Is this because the new site is Flash? If so, is there a way to optimise a Flash site so it can rank highly again? Any advice will be appreciated :-)

Vlasia

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Vlasia

I've looked at both sites and there are quite a few problems:

1) The old domain has not been redirected to the new one. Both domains are still being indexed by Google. View the Google cache of each domain and you'll see what I mean.

2) It appears both domains are hosted on different IP addresses and Google is treating them as separate sites with different PageRank scores and cache history. This could cause duplicate content problems and your friend should arrange to move both domains to the same IP address as soon as possible.

3) What your friend should have done is to implement 301 redirects from her old page URLs on mosaicmadness.com.au to the replacement pages on nolastudio.com.au. If she still knows the old page URLs she should implement the redirects quickly, before they drop out of the search engine index as non-existent. You can find plenty of posts by me on this blog about how to implement 301 redirects effectively. Click on the 301 redirects label below right for starters.

4) Sites built with Flash are generally not search engine friendly because they consist mainly of graphics and Shockwave files that search engine robots can't "read". If your friend's old site consisted of flat text-based HTML pages, it's no wonder the replacement Flash site is not ranking as well. I called up her page over 10 mins ago and I'm still seeing the [loading...] message! I suggest she implement a non-Flash version of the site as soon as possible and provide a link to this non-Flash version on her new home page. This will ensure visitors who dislike Flash (i.e. most of them) won't grow old waiting to see her content and search engines will be able to index it.

5) As an attempt to optimize a Flash site, somebody has decided it might be a good idea to stuff keywords galore between no embed tags on your friend's home page. They're wrong. Have your friend remove that retro spam from her home page immediately or risk Google engineers wetting themselves from laughter as they pass the site URL amongst themselves one rainy Friday afternoon. It's probably already tripped suppression filters.

6) As a short term fix to ensure your friend doesn't lose any traffic that is still trying to find pages on her old site, she should implement a Custom 404 error page on her domain that explains that she has moved domains and provides the new URL for visitors. Otherwise any persons clicking on outdated page links in the search engines will arrive at a plain 404 error page and likely click away never to return.

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Q and A: How do I get search engines to recognize my main domain from the alias domains?

Dear Kalena...

I took out several domains that all pointed to one primary domain. A year on I have changed the content of my site completely and so the 'pointing domains' are totally irrelevant. Now however Yahoo have dropped my primary domain in the search results and only include one of the irrelevant domains. Could you advise how I would go about having the alias domains dropped and my primary domain reinstated with Yahoo?

Ade

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Ade

A client of mine is facing the identical situation right now, but on Google. How big an issue this is really depends on your definition of "pointing" domains. If you merely have the alias domains on the same IP address as your main site, that may not suffice. Does your primary domain have a Google cache? If it doesn't, then Google and or Yahoo may be assuming one of your alias domains is your primary site and ignoring all other domains.

You should park all the aliases to the main domain in your hosting panel so that when the aliases are typed in to the browser URL field, they redirect straight to the primary domain or show the content being cached from the primary domain. When you look at the Google cache for your alias domains, they should each show the message "This is Google's cache for [primary domain]". If they don't, you haven't got the DNS set up properly to point to your primary domain.

The alternative is to use manual 301 redirects from the aliases to the main domain. Your .htaccess file will then instruct search bots of the preferred domain and the others should no longer be indexed. It might take a week or two for the search engines to make the connection and index the primary domain, but it will happen.

You can help things along by creating a sitemap for your primary domain and uploading it to Google's Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer. I recommend using the free XML Sitemaps Generator to create your sitemaps.

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Google confirms 301s are better than 302s to move a domain

Yes, I am meant to be on holidays and no, I'm not meant to be posting here, but I felt this news was too important to wait another two weeks.

At the Search Summit Conference this week, I had the opportunity to ask Adam Lasnik from Google a question that I get asked a lot: Is it better to use 301 Permanently Moved or 302 Temporarily Moved redirects if you need to move a site to a new domain?

Adam replied that provided you are using the same page file names, you should absolutely use 301s rather than 302s on your old pages if you want Googlebot to re-index your site quickly. He also recommended keeping the old site live until the new site was cached and transferring the site over in different stages, depending on the number of pages it has. Google Support Engineer Maile Ohye added that you should also make sure you verify the new domain and upload your XML sitemap for it via Google Webmaster Tools to aid faster indexing.

I asked if using 301s to the new domain would be more likely to trigger the aging delay to kick in for the new site, but Adam reassured me that using 301s in combination with Google Sitemaps should make the domain relocation process fast and painless. He used an example of a 500,000 page e-commerce site he watched moving domains recently via 301s in three stages and claimed that Googlebot had entirely indexed the new site in just over five weeks.

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Q and A: How will search engine ranking be affected if I change domain names?

Dear Kalena...

As always, I am very much enjoying your insightful newsletters.

I have a question for you: If I change domain names and keep the identical website on the new domain, how will search engine ranking be affected?

Thanks!
Marco


Kalena's Answer:

Dear Marco

If you are moving your site to an entirely new domain, you've got to be careful that your search rankings and link popularity aren't negatively affected. This can occur if you use the standard 301 "permanently moved" redirects on your old pages, or worse, use no redirects at all.

Technically, your new domain is treated as a brand new site, regardless of whether the content you use on it has been published on another domain and therefore, Google will subject it to the aging delay for new sites.

To avoid losing all those hard-earned rankings for the six to nine month Google limbo that is the aging delay, it's recommended that you use 302 "temporarily moved" redirects on your old domain pages until your new domain has aged the required time in Google. You can then safely switch the redirects to 301's. You can read more about this method in Scottie Claiborne's article: Switching to a New Domain Without Losing Your Google Rankings.

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Q and A: How do I change our domain name without losing existing customers?

Dear Kalena...

If I change our URL name how do existing customers still find the old one?

Tracy

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Tracy

Your question is not crystal clear to me but I assume you mean: "How do I change our domain name without losing existing customers?".

If you are changing domain names but you want to make sure that existing customers still find you, you simply keep your old domain name and place a permanent 301 redirect on it, pointing it to your new domain. If you have access to your hosting CPanel, you can also achieve this by parking the old domain on the new one or by simply editing your .htaccess file.

Once this is in place, anyone typing in page URLs from your old domain, or clicking on outdated links in search engines will be automatically taken to your new domain. The search engines will eventually update links so they point to your new domain.

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Q and A: Will redirecting multiple domains to a single domain negatively impact our Google rankings?

Dear Kalena...

It's been a couple of years since I posted my last question; but time has come around again where I'm really stumped, and I thought, I bet Kalena will have the answer so (without anymore back slapping):

The question is loosely based around Google's 'Big Daddy' update.

We have recently released a new website (well at least the domain name was new); now before we released this website we had another site (just a different domain name); in fact there were quite a few domain names, all going to one site. Now the problem we have is that, well, a lot of these domain names were successful (are still successful) and we really don't want to lose the traffic from them, in our industry they are pretty good domain names. I want to keep the new site (the same as the previous site) whiter than white, I can't abide all this 'black hat' SEO stuff.

What we've done so far is apply a '301' permanent redirect from all these different domain names to the new website; once you've been '301' redirected and have landed at the new website the previous domain name (i.e. the one you'd have typed in) transfers (in the address bar) to the URL of the new website.

What I'd like to know is: will having these domains (approx twelve 12) effect our ranking, positioning and basic good buddy comradeship with Google?

David

Kalena's Answer:

Dear David

Redirecting domains to other domains is not technically a problem, if it is done correctly at the server and IP. From your description of the method used, you are correctly redirecting those domains to your main site from a search engine's point of view.

Eventually, most search engines will take note of the 301 redirect and update their databases. When that happens and you no longer have any outdated links pointing to your old sites, it is safe to remove the redirects and allow the domains to expire (assuming you wish to do this). In the meantime, you need to start contacting directories and other sites that link to your old domains and ask them to update their links to your new site.

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Q and A: Can I redirect my personal site to my commercial site?

Dear Kalena...

1. Do search engines mind if I have the site map at a personal site and the rest of the site at a commercial site? I made all links on my site map point to www.learningbooks.net which is my homepage of the commercial site. All other personal site pages are redirect pages to the commercial site. I have not tried to get many links to the new commercial URL because I already had so many to www.gate.net/~labooks which is the old personal site URL.

2. Could you explain the very different number of links by Google and by MSN which the popularity check found for www.gate.net/~labooks ? Google had less than a hundred links to my old site and MSN had over a thousand.

Thanks,
Betsy

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Betsy

1) Google doesn't seem to mind what you have done here, because both sites have a comfortable Toolbar PageRank of 5 out of 10 for your commercial site and 6 out of 10 for your personal site and no visible caching problems. However your current solution is inelegant because you are diluting your link popularity (and PageRank) between two sites.

You really should use 301 Permanently Moved redirects to move traffic away from your personal site and on to www.learningbooks.net. See this post for more information. You should also encourage the sites currently linking to your personal site to change their links to point to your commercial site instead. Once your commercial site has caught up in terms of PageRank and link popularity, it should be safe to switch off your old site.

2) Google never shows the true number of backward links they have on record pointing to your site. Usually they only display links that are from sites of a high PageRank or of what they consider to be of high quality. So if you have thousands of links from low quality sites, you'll likely never see them listed as backward links in Google.

Hope this helps!
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