301 redirects

[Dan Connolly]

I am still trying to understand the actual steps in moving a site. Ken Smith had posted something about the 301's being on the new site only but I can't seem to understand that. If someone has bookmarked an interior AA page, and I was wanting to redirect that page's url (example: http://www.realty4atlanta.com/PageMa...D=1483450&NF=1) to my new site on BlueHost, wouldn't I have to leave the AA site up and have something that forwards that inquiry to the new location? I understand how the home page works, just not the interior pages get 301 redirected.


Right now I have 45 pages indexed and 4 supplimental. Some of the indexed neighborhood pages have PR of 1 or 2. I also have about a hundred pages that are have "no index" tags which clients use and have bookmarked.

Anyone have pointers to a "how to" tutorial on creating 301 redirects to move a site?

[Max]

Dan,

301 redirects work based on the current domain. You can't redirect a URL that is not based on your domain. So, keeping that in mind, if you pull your domain from AA and establish it on BlueHost or wherever, you will have people coming to your new site (with the same domain), but via old URLs which you don't have. So, you have the same domain name, but different page names, you just need to match new pages to the old ones via 301 redirect which means - permanently moved.

You can establish 301 redirect between two different domains, but you have to own the one you're redirecting from.

Since you own the domain where your AA site serults - there shouldn't be any problems to redirect any of the old pages to the new ones - on your side not on the AA's.

[Dan Connolly]

Originally Posted by Max

- on your side not on the AA's.

Max I don't understand what you mean by that.

If I move the domain to bluehost and keep paying AA, are the internal pages still there when someone clicks on their bookmark? or does the realty4atlanta.com domain still have to point to AA for those pages to remain live online? If the AA pages remain there can I add a 301 redirect in the AA virtual office?

[Bob]

Originally Posted by Dan Connolly

If I move the domain to bluehost and keep paying AA, are the internal pages still there when someone clicks on their bookmark? or does the realty4atlanta.com domain still have to point to AA for those pages to remain live online? If the AA pages remain there can I add a 301 redirect in the AA virtual office?

You can only have your domain at one place. The redirect is on the server where your site is hosted, so if you host it at BH instead of AA, then AA is out of the picture completely.

The principle is simple. Google queries the server looking for a particular url. If it exists, sans a robots.txt directive to the contrary, then it is served up to Google. If the url doesn't exist, then the server would return a 404, which means page not found. The alternative is the 301, which is basically just a line of code in the htaccess file which tells Google, the url you requested has been permanently moved to this url ( the new url).

That's it. Anything left on AA's servers will just sit there until deleted.

Here's a fairly concise tutorial.

[Max]

Originally Posted by Dan Connolly

Max I don't understand what you mean by that.

If I move the domain to bluehost and keep paying AA, are the internal pages still there when someone clicks on their bookmark? or does the realty4atlanta.com domain still have to point to AA for those pages to remain live online? If the AA pages remain there can I add a 301 redirect in the AA virtual office?

1. If you move your domain to bluehost - your old URLs indexed by search engines (or old links on other sites) will result on the same domain on BlueHost, but they won't exist because you just won't have them at BlueHost in the same format that they are at AA. So, BlueHost will through a page not found message. That's why you move all your important pages to BlueHost and put 301 redirects on the BlueHost (because all indexed URLs will lead to the BlueHost since you moved the domain name there)

2. Nothing has to point to AA. Your domain won't be pointing to AA's server's so nothing will result there. All your old links will result on the server where you take your domain name to.

If you move your domain to BlueHost - everything will be coming to BlueHost.

Here is an example:
You moved your domain to BlueHost, right.. old page about you will look like yourdomain.com/Nav.aspx=/About.aspx - it will come to your domain (which is already on BlueHost) and will look for /Nav.aspx=/About.aspx, but won't find it there because you simply won't have it there. So, what you do - you create a file on your site yourdomain.com/about.html and redirect /Nav.aspx=/About.aspx to /about.html and all other pages the same way. When someone requests a specific page on your site that doesn't exist - you can poin that url to a different one within your site/domain.

Hope this helps.

[Dan Connolly]

Okay, I am beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel. You create a file on the new host somehow, with the page name from the old site and a redirect to the new page on the new site? ah so. Well I have some reading to do (thanks Bob), and thank you Max ! There is so much about this stuff I have to learn!

[Max]

Yes, exactly - there is a special file where redirecting rules being described. It's not about the old and the new server - it's about the domain - if it's the same domain - you're basically redirecting pages from old page to a new one within the same domain. Domain is the key here.