Moving off geocities w/o being penalized

Will have duplicate content on both ... afraid of penalty

[dwilson]

I have a geocities site that should soon be needing a real domain. I intend to copy all the pages to my new domain. I intend to change all the links on my geocities pages to link to the copy on the new domain.

But I'm afraid now of the duplicate content penalty ... and I'm currently getting high rankings for most of my keywords. Is there a better way? Remember, this is geocities, so I can't do any server scripting.

Thanks.

[annej]

Since you can't just do a forwarding page on Geocities I'd put up some related information and then send people to your new site where you will have moved the Geo site. That way there isn't duplicate information but you still have a bit of content on geo. Geo wants content, it's in their rules if I remember right. Eventually you can drop the Geo site altogether.

Also look at your backlinks and write to everyone linked to you to tell them about your move. Everyone won't change it but most well. You want the PR and visitors going to your new site. Leaving the site up at geo will not focus on your new site.

Good luck.

Anne who has been there done that - looonnng ago

[galaga]

Why not just put no robots tags on all of the Goecities pages and simple text saying '...has moved to new domain here'.

[Guenni]

in your case i'd move all pages to the new domain and replace every formaly existing file with a new one. write this in the code and the customers will be redirected to your new site:
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="10;
URL=http://www.yourdomain.com">

but i think its better to wait till the dance is done

[coolcreep]

galaga has it right on.

[coolcreep]

but not his spelling;-)

[dwilson]

Thank you all very much.
dwilson

[jaybee]

Hi dwilson,

What I did was register my domain name first.
Next I went searching for a host. Later I up-loaded
all the pages to the new url. Then I went back to
the geo pages and inserted the meta below.

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="10;
URL=http://www.yourdomain.com">

I left the pages on geo for about two months
and took them off only after they showed up
in Google with the new domain.

There was no problem of any sort at anytime.

Hope this helps.

[annej]

Hmmm, they used to nuke pages that were just doorways to another site. But that was back before Yahoo took over and I left. I suspect all Yahoo cares about is the numbers whether there is content or not.

Anne

[OntheEdge]

they used to nuke pages that were just doorways to another site

last time i read the tos, they still do.
someone please correct me if they've changed that.

However, I've seen pages with nothing but "this page has moved" links sit on geocities for over a year.

IMO..I would pick the lowest risk option, different content that forwards manually to new domain...annj's suggestion

[annej]

The original content can just be one page of informaton or 2 or three to be safe. I'm thinking I did it with just one page. I chit chatted about the topic and said to learn more got to and set the link.

Anne