There are two factors you must keep in mind whenever you move your web site.
The first is the link popularity. Its one of the most valuable assets of your original site and
you certainly don't want to leave it behind. The second is duplicate content issues. The natural
tendency is to simply transfer the identical web pages to the new host, but you can run into
duplicate content penalties as long as the original site on the free host remains in the search engines.
Fortunately, there is only one thing you need to do in order to deal with both of these issues.
You need to make it clear to both search engines and users that your website
has left the original location on the free host and moved to a new URL. In the case of a conventional
host, this is done by using server controls to issue what are known as HTTP code 301 redirects. If
the host uses Apache web server software, these redirect commands are controled through the .htaccess file.
If the host uses Microsoft IIs server software, the site control panel can handle the job. But free
hosting services rarely allow their users access to these controls. So the question remains, how to
handle this situation. The answer lies in using the much-maligned Refresh <META> tag.
The Refresh <meta> tag lets you issue a command - well, more of a suggestion - to the
user's browser to move to a new web page after a specified delay period. It was once a tool of search
engine SPAMmers who would use them on keyword-stuffed "doorway" pages to lure search engine
traffic. The problem reached a level where the search engines started to penalize sites for using this
<meta> tag. But it is the perfect tool for use on a free host where you cannot issue server redirect
commands because you put it in your own web pages. It goes in the <head> section alongside the other
<meta> tags. And the really good news is that search engines have not only stopped penalizing sites
for using it, they have actually begun to recognize them as substitutes for server redirect commands - in
some cases, treating them as if you had issued the preferred code 301 server redirect.
I noticed this change in attitude around 2003 while researching a site that, not
coincidentally, been moved from a free host to a paid host. I was checking the backlinks of the new
URL when I noticed that Google was including links that actually pointed to the original free host.
I was naturally amazed to see this after having several years of people saying how dangerous it was
to use the Refresh <meta> tag. This discovery was a boon to a client of mine who wanted to
restructure her website. Her site was hosted on a Microsoft IIs server and we didn't have access to
the control panel to set up the redirects. So I installed Refresh <meta> tags as a part of
an overall restructuring. I am pleased to say that the whole thing went smoothly, with absolutely
no disruption in my client's search engine rankings.
The structure of the Refresh <meta> is very simple:
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL=http://www.yournewsite.com/thepage.html">
There are three pieces of information that you need to deal with here. The first is the "http-equiv"
attibute that you need to set to "refresh", and the "content" attribute that consists of
two parts - (1) the delay (in seconds) before the browser should move to the target URL and, (2)
the target URL itself. The target URL is, of course, the key. You want the search engines to know that
the page has been moved.
You need to install a Refresh <meta> tag on every page that was on the original
host. If the same page exists in the new site, then by all means set the target URL in the content
attribute to the URL of that identical page. If the page does not exist in the new site, then just set it to
the root URL of the new site on the paid host. This will not only update the search engine index in terms
of the page content, it will also (over time) transfer the link popularity.
As an added precaution to insure that the old pages are not penalized, you need to strip
them completely of the original content, leaving only a message to users (you remember users, don't you?)
notifying them of the move and including a plain HTML link to the new site using the same URL that you
used in the Refresh <meta> tag. Something like:
<h1 align="center">This Page Has Moved</h1>
<p>This page has been moved to: <a href="http://www.newsite.com/newpage.html">http://www.newsite.com/newpage.html</a>.
Please be sure to update your bookmarks. Thank-you.
</p>
And change the page <title> tag to simply the name of the site, with no additional keywords.
Moving a web site is always a difficult task, and you want to preserve all of
the hard work you've put into the site in the past. Using this simple approach will help insure that
your site will continue to thrive in the search engines. Keep in mind that you will probably have a
substantial drop in your rankings until the search engines completely absorb the changes you've made.
You should do your best to ask anyone who is linking to your old site to update the URL to the
new site. And redouble your link building efforts to build your site's ranking strength.
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