How should I do a 301 domain redirect?

UnDerDoG81 · Apr 25, 2017

Hi,

I bought a 2 year old Website and I don´t like the domain name. I´ll say 95% of the links point to the home page. I want to redirect it to a fresh domain. The website itself has only about 25 pages. Should I simply do a 301 old domain to new domain? Or point each url to url via 301? I guess the front page would get more power when I do a 301 from domain to domain?

I´ve read in an older post that a website loses 15% of its power when you do a 301 redirect. Is that still true?

How long would it take until I get the old rankings back with the new domain?

And what about indexation? How can I avoid that google thinks it´s duplicate content? Is it enough to do that in webmaster tools?

seohug · Apr 25, 2017

Let's say your old domain is olddomain.com and the new domain is newdomain.com

Create a file on the root of folder of old domain (where the index file is) and call it .htaccess
Add the following content in

Code:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^olddomain\.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.olddomain\.com$
RewriteRule ^/?$ "http\:\/\/www\.newdomain\.com\/" [R=301,L]

Browser to the old domain using olddomain.com and www.olddomain.com and check it redirects correctly. Change the http above to https if you run on SSL.

Usually, full juice is passed to the new domain. Allow for up to 4 weeks. No duplicate content issue if redirect is done correctly.

UnDerDoG81 · Apr 26, 2017

seohug said:
Let's say your old domain is olddomain.com and the new domain is newdomain.com

Create a file on the root of folder of old domain (where the index file is) and call it .htaccess
Add the following content in

Code:

RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^olddomain\.com$ [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.olddomain\.com$ RewriteRule ^/?$ "http\:\/\/www\.newdomain\.com\/" [R=301,L]

Browser to the old domain using olddomain.com and www.olddomain.com and check it redirects correctly. Change the http above to https if you run on SSL.

Usually, full juice is passed to the new domain. Allow for up to 4 weeks. No duplicate content issue if redirect is done correctly.

Thanks a lot!

If the old domain was running on http and now is running on https, how can I redirect both variations? Since the old domain has links to http and https.

seohug · Apr 26, 2017

UnDerDoG81 said:
Thanks a lot!

If the old domain was running on http and now is running on https, how can I redirect both variations? Since the old domain has links to http and https.

Replace http to https on the 3rd line above.

UnDerDoG81 · Apr 26, 2017

seohug said:
Replace http to https on the 3rd line above.

But then http (the old links that point to http) won´t get redirected?

seohug · Apr 26, 2017

UnDerDoG81 said:
But then http (the old links that point to http) won´t get redirected?

External links will get redirected fine. Internal relative link will also get redirected.

If you have explicit internal links like

Code:

http://www.olddomain.com/page.html

, it will get redirected to

Code:

https://www.newdomain.com/page.html

, but it would be better to update then in the inner content.

bartosimpsonio · Apr 26, 2017

If these are legit sites, then after you 301, add both to search console and tell Google you've changed the site address. It's in the settings (little gear icon) for a specific site. It helps a lot and speeds up the transfer of links from the old to the new site.

lightshines · Apr 27, 2017

seohug said:
External links will get redirected fine. Internal relative link will also get redirected.

If you have explicit internal links like

Code:

http://www.olddomain.com/page.html

, it will get redirected to

Code:

https://www.newdomain.com/page.html

, but it would be better to update then in the inner content.

Learnt a new thing from your post. Thanks

UnDerDoG81 · Apr 28, 2017

seohug said:
Let's say your old domain is olddomain.com and the new domain is newdomain.com

Create a file on the root of folder of old domain (where the index file is) and call it .htaccess
Add the following content in

Code:

RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^olddomain\.com$ [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.olddomain\.com$ RewriteRule ^/?$ "http\:\/\/www\.newdomain\.com\/" [R=301,L]

Browser to the old domain using olddomain.com and www.olddomain.com and check it redirects correctly. Change the http above to https if you run on SSL.

Usually, full juice is passed to the new domain. Allow for up to 4 weeks. No duplicate content issue if redirect is done correctly.

That did not work, what did I wrong? It simply does not redirect anything. Google says also that the 301 does not work.

McPreneur · Apr 28, 2017

UnDerDoG81 said:
That did not work, what did I wrong?

Just do a domain forward from your registrar (eg. Godaddy). It's much easier than writing the htaccess. Google "redirect domain at Godaddy" or replace Godaddy with your registrar. It takes 1 minute to do.

mbreezy · Apr 28, 2017

If you want to use the same content, map the URLs from the old domain to the one; then use the Google Change of Address tool in Search Console/Webmaster Tools.

UnDerDoG81 · Apr 29, 2017

Hey, I did the 301 redirect now with cpanel and from domain to domain it works. But when I open something like "olddomain. com/oldurl" - I get an 404 instead of a redirect. Is that normal?

And should I force google to index the new domain? Or should I let that naturally happen? I approved in google wmt that the old domain should point to the new domain.

EDIT: Nevermind, I had to activate wildcard. But still the 2nd question is interesting.

UnDerDoG81 · May 2, 2017

So, I did that redirect on saturday and today my "old" website disapeared from rankings. But the new site did not pop up anywhere in the top100. I guess thats normal?

seohug · May 3, 2017

UnDerDoG81 said:
So, I did that redirect on saturday and today my "old" website disapeared from rankings. But the new site did not pop up anywhere in the top100. I guess thats normal?

Yes, give it 2-4 weeks

yoganandayyagari · May 3, 2017

Even I am also looking for the same..

Nut-Nights · May 3, 2017

Now Google pass PR and link juice on all types of 30x redirects. So its really doesn't matter. But normally you will see results in a week if you setup everything correctly.

UnDerDoG81 · May 3, 2017

Thanks! This is so strange, always when I try something and it works, something different happens and "destroys" it. So, the main keyword for the old domain jumped from #27 to #11 two days ago. Now the old domain disapeared, the new domain showed up today and sits on #27 for the main keyword. So I am not sure if google released my old domain from a penalty for two days and the new domain will sit a while on the penalty position as well.

UnDerDoG81 · May 5, 2017

Still nailed on #27 - 31. Not sure if this is normal since I never did a domain redirect before? It looks like the main keyword has arrived it´s main position now.
Old Domain was sitting on #27 for a long time but moved to #11 just two days after I pointed everything to the new domain. That sucks now.

UnDerDoG81 · May 20, 2017

So, almost 1 month passed and still no rankings. 3 days ago even the 2 main keywords dropped dropped from #30 to nowhere. Is that normal? Or should I go back to the old domain? That one was sitting on #11 for the main keyword.

rocky_15 · May 20, 2017

I was looking the same thing, thanks @seohug

How should I do a 301 domain redirect?

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