It is with great discontent that in 2015 I am still seeing business’s Internet presences completely destroyed by people and even “marketing companies” who have no idea how to properly 301 redirect a website.
The proper way to 301 redirect a website:
- Copy all of the files from OldDomain.com to NewDomain.com
- Add this strip of code to OldDomain.com’s .htaccess file: Redirect 301 / http://www.NewDomain.com/
That’s it!
Anyone telling you to manually 301 every file is an idiot. There are 700 reasons you do not want to do this.
If you are using a CMS
If you are using WordPress you will want to go into the backend and change the site’s URL and resave permalinks settings. If you can’t get into the backend you can change the URL in your wp-config.php file by adding these two strips of code:
define(‘WP_HOME’,’http://NewDomain.com’);
define(‘WP_SITEURL’,’http://NewDomain.com’);
Will you lose SEO or search rankings after doing a 301 redirect?
On the Internet there are many mixed reviews. I have personally done 301s in the past before without skipping a beat. Zero hiccups, zero downtime, zero ranking changes, zero traffic loss. Unfortunately I have seen this goofed up too many times. If you aren’t sure how to proceed feel free to visit our page on SEO consulting.
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