Forum Moderators: phranque
Anyway, I have one main site, and a couple of blogs, each with unique content, but in the same field as the main site. I have decided to incorporate both blogs into my main site, making it one blog, but hosted on my main domain name.
Question: What type of re-direct code/etc do I need that will automatically send my regular visitors to my new URL, and what should I do to make sure Google and other search engines doesn't slap me with a duplicate content penalty.
I'm most worried about the duplicate content penalty, especially from Google, because I plan on transferring all my posts from my two blogs over to the blog I will be hosting on my main site. Now, I plan on keeping the re-direct around for a month, until the end of November, just to let everyone know (also so I can use up the month of hosting I already paid for for the two blogs).
But what should I do to ensure that the move, and the transfer of posts, go smoothly, and not incur any wrath from the search engines, in particular Google, which is, pretty much, my bread and butter because it sends me almost 80% of my visitors.
I hope I've made it clear what I'm asking. If not, I'll try to elaborate...
I don't know if I can answer all your questions, but maybe I can give you a place to start. The ideal solution to your merge problem would be if you could copy all the files from your two old blogs to your main site without having to change any filenames. While I suspect that this will work for the posts themselves, if you're running the same blogging software, I suspect you'll see some conflicts in the post archive lists.
If you're competent with HTML, you can probably merge the two archives into combined files, using whatever archiving system you have chosen (depends on your blogging software).
If you don't know HTML, I would suggest copying the archives from each of your old sites into separate directories on the new server. Then create a blog post that explains the move, and has links to your archive files on the new server for both blogs. To make sure this blog post doesn't get buried, put a link to it on your sidebar.
Now, the problem of getting your users and the search engine spiders to realize you've moved.
If your old hosts were on Apache (UNIX/Linux Host), then you can use what's called a 301 redirect, putting it in your .htaccess file on the old server. This is where having the same filenames really helps.
Your code will look something like this:
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.oldblogname\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ [newsitename.com...] [R=permanent,L]
This tells visitors (humans and spiders) that the file they requested can now be found on newsitename.com, and that it will permanently be there, so there's no need to come back to oldblogname.com.
You'll need to do this on both old sites. Also, different configurations may require adjustments to the syntax in the .htaccess file. You can find additional answers and get specific questions about mod_rewrite in the Apache Server Forum [webmasterworld.com].
If your old blogs were hosted on IIS, then you have a bit of a problem, since there isn't an easy way to redirect old URLS to new unless you have access to IIS manager, unlikely in a hosted situation. We'll hope this isn't the case, but if it is let us know and we'll try to help.
If you do all of the above, your users should be able to find you, and the spiders should follow along as well. People have mixed luck with moving content to new domains - sometimes it can take a few months for the search engines to sort everything out. This is especially the case if the domain you're moving to is brand new.
Good luck.
