Moving Sites ~ correct ways and wrong ways?

[Don Price REALTOR]

I need to make a plan and stick with it. So far circumstances seem to always change my plans but in the end I am sure that I need to have an independent site free from vendors.

The fear I have is losing any gains I have made with the AA site ~ where I really have much more into it then I have gotten out of it when you add time spent on it.

I can build a site that looks better and probably has better code then the AA site ~ my shortfalls comes with what I'll call ignorantly the 'back end'. I heard this used often but really do not know what the exact definition.

Things like adding a way to place my listings on my site through an idx feed and quick page edits all intimidates me at the moment.

Also ~ at this point I really don't know what a 'new' site should be comprised of given all the add ons I have seen. What is worth it and what isn't?

All that said ~ how would I move a site from AA to private and not lose the SERP.

Matt and Max did a great job of this ~ and know I need to as well.

What steps should be planned for - what to avoid?

[Dan Connolly]

Don, I spent a year trying to build my own site on BlueHost, learned Dreamweaver and CSS and spent countless evenings trying to build a site. I finally decided to forget it and went to Property Town, with Greg Boser at the helm. Couldn't be happier with my decision. You know a bunch of people there. I definately need the support.

[Don Price REALTOR]

Dan, thanks I'll keep that in mind. Why did they take the prices off their web site? I can remember when they started they were at the same cost as AA only did not offer the Bells and Whistles. I also noticed they are trying to be the Keller Williams of web hosting ~ I mean what is all that referral stuff. I would think if your product is better and you can save a guy a buck that would be worth more then some sort of a scheme, IMHO. I wish you and Property Town the best but for now I have to watch all my expenses.

Now finding out the right way of moving a site, aaahhh that is something we all should know ~ if not for now then for the future.

[Dan Connolly]

I think you must have them confused with some other company, they were never the same prices as AA. I also think that every provider has some kind of referral system in place. It doesn't have anything to do with the pricing model.

As far as moving your site goes. It is not that difficult. You have to create a new page for each page of your site that you believe has value and is ranking and then you create a 301 redirect for each. That is done on the new site. AA used to charge $100 for a 301 redirect. That is not because it is difficult, it is because they rip people off. For a cheap provider, I was happy with BlueHost. You have FTP access which means you can load the pages from your hard drive onto their server by drag and drop. It supports wordpress so you can have a blog and it costs less than $75 per year. I am not sure what their ratio of downtime is but they were always there while I was working on my site.

[Bob]

You have a total of 11 pages indexed in Google, so you dont have to worry about much in moving off of AA.

The only urls you would have to be concerned about redirecting are those that rank well or have linkts to them.

[Don Price REALTOR]

Bob, Since you and everyone here pointed out how sites were being penalized for duplicate content I have reduced pages severely and I now glance at the urls once in awhile to make sure I only have 1 url per page and not multiple ones that AA generates.

Taking a look at my sites page storage I show +-45, and most used to be indexed - but I haven't been checking for months. Maybe that is why my ranking began improving?

I don't know what to make of that or if I should be concerned, other then even though as a whole I rank much better but get less in site generated leads.

Thanks, now I have more questions then before