In this article, I’ll explain how to Safely Move your website to a new host without losing your SEO ranking. Or in other words, how NOT to resettle your point to another host and avoid the same miscalculations that I’ve made.
Mistakes to Avoid
The problem was, that I wanted to move the point to a Unix host and I had erected a website using Active Garçon runners hosted under Windows Internet Information Garçon( web garçon). At the time, my windows host had endured significant time-out and multitudinous service outages which were impacting my business.
Being the competent programmer that I am, I decided to just convert the whole point to PHP so that it could fluently be hosted on my recently acquired whiz-bang fancy hosting garçon. That wasn’t an undertaking that I took smoothly, although I surely should have paid further attention to the hunt machines before indeed considering this change.
I was of the naive opinion that since my website was still under the same sphere name and the content was identical that hunt machines similar as Google would realize that this is the same point and I wouldn’t lose any runner rank. The major mistake that I made was that I had changed to a new scripting language which caused all of my URLs to change. rather of a URL ending withportfolio.asp, I now had all of my runners with the new PHP extension like portfolio.php
This was mistake number 1. My alternate mistake wasn’t turning my original URLs using Apache’s URL rewriting module(mod_rewrite). This module will tell all callers looking for the old runners, that a web runner has permanently moved via an HTTP deflect( status law 301). Without this information, all of my hard- earned runner rank was lost and by the time that I figured out what happed, it was too late for me to correct the problem.
This kind of mistake is every webmaster’s agony and surely a commodity you should hope to avoid. One thing you realize as a webmaster is that no website change should be taken smoothly. Be apprehensive of the counteraccusations of your conduct on the hunt machines and also for callers to your point who anticipate a certain position of usability and benevolence from you website.
Website miscalculations to Avoid
Changing your runner URLs( script names, document path, or sphere name)
Converting Your point to Another Scripting Language so that the URL is affected( see over)
Duplicating content from one runner to another
Duplicating content from one sphere to another
Duplicating title Markers
Duplicating META description markers
Duplicating content is a big concern for webmasters due to the way that search machines indicator content. When a hunt machine finds indistinguishable content, it’ll just ignore the duplicated content. Only content for the primary or most” authoritative” runner will be listed. As a webmaster, you’ll want to insure that your content is unique and also applicable to the web runner its located on.
Webmasters should also be careful not to duplicate content in TITLE and META DESCRIPTION rudiments which appear in the HEAD section of a document. This content is picked up by hunt machines and used to produce the factual hunt results which appear in spots similar as Yahoo and Bing.
How to Safely Resettle a Website
So now that you have read my admonitions, but you still want to resettle your point to a new host, then are some guidelines to follow to do so safely without losing runner rank.
First and foremost, before you begin any migration, you must make sure your website conforms to the Google Webmaster Guidelines. These guidelines contain detailed instructions on what hunt machines look for in a website. The rules not only help you to make your point more usable for callers and quest, they also help you to rank better for important keywords for organic hunt marketing.
If you’re changing URLs
still, you should follow these fresh guidelines
If you’re changing URLs for the runners on your point because you’re converting to a new garçon- side scripting language or you’re justre-organizing runners on your website. Make sure you put a endless deflect( HTTP status 301) for all of the old URLs on your point you wish to resettle.
still, minimize your use of Flash, and Silverlight, If you really watch about hunt machine rankings.
All runners should be navigated using standard HTML hyperlinks
All applicable content should be bedded using plain old HTML
What if I lose Page Rank?
What should you do if you lose runner rank after a migration? Whether you followed the guidelines above or not, you can still take corrective action as long as it hasn’t been too long since you performed your migration.
The first study on a lot of webmasters’ minds is to return the website back to the old interpretation to attempt to recapture the runner rank. This may clearly be an option, but it isn’t one that I would advise. The following suggestions should help you to recapture your runner rank without returning your website.
still, follow all of the guidelines above for migrating your point duly
If you have not already.This includes putting in all of the redirects for URLs that have changed
Google allows you to request retrospection of your website due to poor ranking
runner rank can be lost as the result of a penalty incurred because a website has shared in a link-switching scheme or bought links for perfecting hunt machine rank.
Monitoring Your Ranking
There are a lot of tools available to webmasters who wish to track their website rankings. Check out Hunt Machine Optimization draw- sways for Firefox and Google Chrome cybersurfs. They give webmasters with a wealth of information for selling your website. Some of the features they offer include hunt machine ranking, total runners listed, number of backlinks, and any HTML confirmation crimes that passed while parsing the HTML luxury.
Check out the Web Rank toolbar for the Firefox cybersurfed and the Chrome SEO add-on for the Chrome cybersurfed. Also, the SEO point tools add- on for Chrome is veritably useful for tracking your hunt machine criteria . To learn further about online marketing of websites, check out the SEO Moz website. You’ll find lots of information then regarding optimizing and selling your website.
Be sure to educate yourself on SEO and SEM because it’s a continually evolving field and there are new discoveries and inventions being made all the time. Only through constant alert and continuity can webmasters hope to vend and manage a business successfully.
