Tumblr to WordPress confused...

[100RedFlags]

This post is deleted!

[AdoptionHelp]

Two things are going on here.

• You want to 301 redirect your old URLs on 100redflags.com to where they will be on the new WP site. There are plugins to help if you don't want to go directly into your .htaccess file.

• You want to avoid duplicating content on your Tumblr and WP site and vice versa - you can do that by utilizing Tumblr's "don't crawl" option if the content is actually a duplication. A better way would be if Tumblr allowed you to set your own page as the canonical version, or possibly redirect to your site. I don't think they allow this, but could be wrong. That would essentially transfer the majority of your tumblr link juice to your domain where you probably want it.

[100RedFlags]

Thanks Ryan. So, I actually did do a 301 for all the Tumblr posts, however those were all 100redflags.com/post/xxxxxxx/posttitle. Any links that are out there in the wild would be those.

BUT, now all of those posts are the same /post/xxxx etc, but 100redflags.tumblr.com instead.

So the question becomes, do I need to 301 redirect all of those as well? Or could I just go "don't crawl" and because I already did 301s for the posts URLs as they would have been previously crawled?

Such a headache

[NakulGoyal]

William, you can't 301 or anything else like that to 100redflags.tumblr.com /* pages.

The best option would be to stop the crawl. Another option that I would recommend is that:

Once you have confirmed all your actual content has migrated to your own blog with no dependency on Tumblr.com, why not get rid of the entire content from Tumblr.com and on the homepage/404 page, do a post that tells that 100redflags.tumblr.com is now moved to 100redflags.com and provide an active hyperlink so users can reach there.

At the same time, do the deindex. Just the deindex would help, but it could also hurt in the long run. It definitely won't help you in any way having the content site at 2 places, would it ?

[100RedFlags]

Thanks, Nakul.

I guess I was wondering if I also had to 301 from those Tumblr.coms to the 100redflags.coms - essentially then I'd have two sets of 301s pointing toward the actually 100redflags.com.

Regarding removing the content, yeah I'm totally fine with that as long as that content not being there anymore doesn't affect the page rank obtained from that content previously. Not sure how that works.

Oh, and the only benefit right now or desire to keep Tumblr up is so the 400 followers can navigate their way over to the new site. So, I was thinking of keeping it running but ONLY posting the new post link (so no content is duplicated) so they'd be directed to the new site, but could still see there was a new post.

[NakulGoyal]

Yeah, but since Tumblr.com is not a domain you control, you can't 301 them to your pages. They don't give you the ability to do that...yet.

As far as the followers, now that's some value there. Maybe you should consider doing these. Get rid of all content from Tumblr.com, do some teaser posts with new descriptions/introductions/excerpts on tumblr.com with the full story link pointing to your main blog. And yes, you could then start doing the same for the future posts. As I said, if you have the time and resources available, you could do teaser posts for all your posts on Tumblr.com or just the most popular/high traffic ones. Whatever makes sense from your time perspective.

But yes, you are on the right track and this will certainly work.  Good idea BTW, Nice niche :).

[AdoptionHelp]

I'm not sure I'm following you, let me make sure...

You used to have 100redflags.com on tumblr but now you're moving all the site content to a different server and have pointed your DNS to that new server, ie off of tumblr.

If this is true then no you don't need to do anything else. If the site structure and the URLS are all the same then moving servers will be transparent to the search engines.

Regarding your stuff on tumblr account, I think Nakul has come up with the best solution: rework them into blurbs that point to your real site.

[100RedFlags]

That's correct. Yeah, the worry is (or was) that the old post, even though it was 100redflags.com, because it was sitting on Tumblr, would necessitate some sort of action in order to retain whatever equity was built in that content. If it's as easy as just making sure those old URLs are 301'd, and I can do what I please with the Tumblr content, that's great news.

Thanks to you both for the prompt responses. Really helpful and much appreciated.