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When moving your website, you have three different options; this article will discuss all of your different options involved in making your decision.
First, you could do nothing and just publish your site with different urls. This could be problematic if your website had a PageRank™ before moving it. This is due to the fact that Google™ will have seen an association between the old site and the new one, even if all of the content and design are exactly identical. The Google™ spiders will see the move as the design of a completely new site, and thusly treat your site accordingly.
Secondly, you could do a 302 Redirect also known as a Temporary Redirect. This is probably not the best choice because the Search Engine Spiders will see the Server Header initially downloading the page. Typically it will return a 200 OK message, but in the case of a Redirect, it will return the type of Redirect you happen to be using. If you use a 302 Redirect the Search Engine Spiders will typically ignore the page, as it is misleading to the end user or other sites that may be hosting links to your site.
The last method and the preferred one in the eyes of the Search Engine Spiders, is the 301 Redirect, also known as a Permanent Redirect. When describing Redirects in their Webmasters Guidelines Google™ States: "If you're old URLs redirect to your new site using HTTP 301 (permanent) redirects, our crawler will discover the new URLs. For more information about 301 HTTP redirects." (http://www.Google™ .com/webmasters/3.html). If you use a 302 Redirect there is usually no change in PageRank™ or listings until Google™ Spiders it after you implement your 301 Redirect in your .htaccess on your server. (Warning if you are not an experienced web developer do not change your .htaccess file yourself, as this could cause the site to not work at all) Once the Spiders detect the change, your site will lose all PageRank™ for a short period of time, usually 1-3 weeks, then you should notice your PageRank™ returning. After you implement the 301 Redirect it is prudent to run a link checking program such as Xenu Link Sleuth. This is a good tool to quickly check to see if any of the links to the old pages are still out there.
However you choose to do your redirect (301 Redirect is probably the best in 90% of all applications) remember to be careful anytime you modify the .htaccess file, and be sure to make two backups on your local computer; a working one and an auxiliary backup. Remember your web host company probably cannot restore it if it is altered.
Erick Zegeer
COO
Phone: 203.907.3209
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