Best Way to Re-Direct traffic from existing site to new site?

[Prime85]

Good Morning,

I have an existing site (http://goo.gl/QKkpi) running on a slow server.

We decided to create a new site (http://goo.gl/XUH3f) with the intention of de-commissioning the first one.

Both sites are on the same WMT account.  What is the best way to permanently redirect any backlinks/traffic (all levels, from home page to product pages) from the old site to the new site (prior to shutting down the first one).

Thanks a lot!

[mrdavidingram]

Hi,

Use a page level 301 redirect. So go through each page of your old site, and find the most relevant page to it on the new site, and 301 it across using the htaccess file.

This will give you the most benefit in terms of traffic and SEO, plus it will keep your users happy as they will be landing on a relevant page on the new site if they come through an external link or search result.

Good luck with the new site.

Thanks,

David

[Prime85]

Is there a way to do this easily for 4,000 pages or does it have to be done one by one?

[mrdavidingram]

Sadly if you want to be really specific and get the maximum value, it will be a manual task.

Excel can be your friend here, and it would make quite a quick job of it.

If you didn't want to spend that much time on it, you could be a bit vaguer and do it at a folder level (e.g 301 all pages in /blog folder to the new /blog.html page), but you wouldn't be getting the full value from your old site.

Let me know if you want any help or advice.

Thanks,

David

[KeriMorgret]

Aside from the domain name, is the URL structure identical between the two sites? If so, there should be a real easy redirect to just say "if person hit oldsite.com/page123 take them to newsite.com/page123". I don't know that exact code, but can get someone on here who does.

[mrdavidingram]

Keri is right, if you are going to be using an identical strucure on your new site and all pages are going to be carried across, you can use this redirect that will just transfer the old domain URL's to the identical new one:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^olddomain.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.olddomain.com$
RewriteRule (.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

So the old url http://www.oldsite.com/best-red-shoes

Would automatically direct to http://www.newsite.com/best-red-shoes

Note; this is for an Apache server

David

[Prime85]

Thank you both.

I will try this out and let you know

[Prime85]

By the way, where is that script entered ?  On the new site or the old site (they are on different hosts)..

thanks

[mrdavidingram]

It goes in the .htaccess file on the old site.

Thanks

David