jonathanwthomas.net

The thing that inspired this blog was the amount of traffic I was getting on another blog for blogging and WordPress related posts. I wanted to move that content to a new blog focused on the subject but I didn’t want to lose the search rankings on those posts.

The solution was simple: I moved the content and used a 301 redirect.

What is a 301 Redirect?

A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect inserted into an .htaccess file. It tells a the webserver that if someone tries to go to a certain page, to send them to another one page instead.

The good thing about this is that you don’t create a dead link when you move content, you simply tell the search bots that it’s moved permanently. This tells the search bots to update their index and crawl on to the new link. This also passes any pagerank and keyword rankings the page may have had.

It’s an incredibly powerful tool to use when managing your content.

So, let’s go through the process of moving a post and then using a 301 redirect.

1. Copy Your Content

First you need to copy the content you want to move from one blog to the new one. Make note of the current posts permalink and paste it into a text document.

For example: http://www.yourblog.com/2008/2/12/your-blog-post

2. Unpublish

Unpublish your post so that it will only exist in one place.

3. Create New Post and Move Content

Create a new post on the blog you’re moving the content to and paste your content, then hit publish once everything is restored. I recommend using the original posting date/time, tags and categories.

4. Find New Permalink

Once the new post is live, copy the permalink into a text document.

For example: http://www.yournewblog.com/2008/2/12/your-blog-post

5. Download Your .htaccess File

Download your .htaccess file for THE OLD website’s root directory from your web server. You may need to turn on hidden files to see it.

Create a backup of this file!

Once you’ve downloaded it, open it with a texteditor.

6. Editing the .htaccess File

Your .htaccess file should look similar to this:

[code lang="apache"]
# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

# END WordPress
[/code]

Create a new line before # END WordPress then enter the following code:

[code lang="apache"]
redirect 301 2008/2/12/your-blog-post http://www.yournewblog.com/2008/2/12/your-blog-post
[/code]

The structure of the redirect is “redirect 301″ followed by “permalink” followed by the “New URL.”

7. Save and Re-upload

Save your changes to the .htaccess. It should now look similar to this:

[code lang="c"]
# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

redirect 301 2008/2/12/your-blog-post http://www.yournewblog.com/2008/2/12/your-blog-post

# END WordPress
[/code]

After you’ve saved, re-upload to the root directory of the OLD blog.

8. Test

Now, try and go to your the old link and see what happens. If you did everything right, it should automatically take you to the new location of your blog post. It might take a while for the change to take effect, depending on your webhost.

In the future whenever someone searches and finds that post, when they click the link they will be redirected to the new blog post and the search bot will be notified of the changes.

9. Do as Many as You need To

You can use as many 301 redirects as you like. But don’t go crazy as the search bots may think something is up. I moved a total of 8 posts over and because of that, Niche Blogger Today had steady traffic from day one and was indexed almost immediately by the search bots, a process which can sometimes take weeks of waiting.