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Moving Domains with 301 Redirect

In an email today Mr. “Sam Gastro” asked a question about 301 redirect and how it works.

This is the email he sent me:

Something I have been wondering about (and scared to actually attempt) is to merge sites into one domain. One of my sites has been around for 5 years, and ranking well with a PR of 4, my other domain is a PR0 with only 6 months of age. The point of creating the new domain and site was to try new marketing ways and also SEO techniques. Well now I think my new site converts much better on sales than the old one, and has a more appealing and understanding domain name, although only 6 months old. I have heard a 301 redirect will transfer all the rankings and backlinks and all that good stuff, but I am afraid to try it in fear of loosing all the sales on my old site. I think this might be a problem for a lot of marketers. I hope you have some insight on doing things like this. Is it too risky to do a 301 redirect on the old site?

What he is asking is how th 301 redirect actually works. Does it retain the backlinks and rankings to new site from old site. I have seen many people asking in forums about how they can move an older site of theirs to a new domain without loosing their backlinks and rankings in Google. Can that be done at all?

301-redirect.jpgThe answer is, yes, it can be done but not completely (not 100%). There are many factors in the ranking of a website and the age of the domain is also one of them. In a 301 permanent redirect, the backlink juice is surely transferred to the new domain, but backlinks are not the only reason for your ranking (though it is one of the major reasons).

So how does it goes in reality?

Let me give you with an example. I had a HIV symptoms related website called http://www.hivsymptoms.org. For some reason, I had to move it to a new domain http://www.hivsymptomsonline.com. I used the 301 permanent redirect. I put the following in the .htaccess file in the main folder of the domain:


Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.hivsymptomsonline.com/$1 [R=301,L]

I replicated the site on the other host with EXACTLY SAME directory and file structure. So all the traffic from this site was redirected to the new ‘HIV symptoms online’ website.

But how did the rankings for the old and the new site do?

HIV symptoms .org site was ranking number one for “hiv symptoms” keyword before this move. After the redirect the same site stayed number one position for next 15 days or so. Then the site vanished from the SERPs and new site did no appear. After the next 15 days, the new site hivsymptomsonline.com came up in top 10 rankings. Then in the next 3 months the ranking of the site is increasing slowly. As of this writing (around 4months have passed), the rank for the new site has reached at number 2 for keyword hiv symptoms in Google.

I have not done any extra link building or anything special. I just did the redirect as stated above. It has reached number 2 in 4 months. I expect to reach number one in next 3 months or so.

So, with the help of this example, you can see that how the 301 permanent redirect works for the backlinks and the ranking of the site.

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Jim Karter on January 19th 2009 in Google, Link Building, Traffic Generation

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46 Responses to “Moving Domains with 301 Redirect”

  1. Sky Xavier responded on 19 Jan 2009 at 9:37 pm #

    thats really a nice information… i am still confuse how can .com backlinks refere to .org backlinks? still some confusion. anyways nice article and really helpful to many readers who have this question and are affraid to transfer the site name.

  2. Jim Karter responded on 19 Jan 2009 at 11:22 pm #

    The links are still pointing to hivsimptoms.org. I have not changed them. But due to the 301 redirect from it to the new site hivsymptomsonline.com, Google considers those links to be pointed to this new site.

  3. Dalirin -Blogsnd.com responded on 20 Jan 2009 at 12:05 am #

    Nice post. This proves the fact that the link juice transfers to the new site. If I may ask, why did you use that code in the .htaccess. I am asking because on my host I can click an option called domain redirect and I can do a permanent redirect to my new site.

  4. Jim Karter responded on 20 Jan 2009 at 12:44 am #

    Its effectively the same thing. Either you can redirect from your control panel or put this in your .htaccess file.

    I prefer to do it my way and don’t rely much on the host.

  5. Suresh responded on 20 Jan 2009 at 3:07 am #

    Thank you for sharing the information and how about the options for the blogs hosted on blogspot ?

  6. BecauseILoveJimKarter, :) responded on 20 Jan 2009 at 3:39 am #

    Awesome and revealing information. You have no idea how many people out there have wondered how to do this. Thanks for sharing, Jim. You see why we will ALWAYS love ya, :)

  7. Jim Karter responded on 20 Jan 2009 at 3:58 am #

    Suresh, for the blogs hosted on blogspot, there is no “permanent 301 redirect” possible. Sorry.

  8. Murali responded on 20 Jan 2009 at 8:44 am #

    interesting post jim

  9. Amit Bhawani responded on 20 Jan 2009 at 11:18 am #

    It surely works, I did it 2 years back and iam planning to redirect a recently bought a site with 45k backlinks.
    Hope The new site will rank soon with Awesomeness! :)

  10. Neeraj responded on 20 Jan 2009 at 7:38 pm #

    Jim,

    Whenever you feel like writing next time, it will be good if you make a post on your chemothearpy case study, as it has completed 10 months and 10 days.

  11. P Moore A responded on 21 Jan 2009 at 12:23 am #

    I will definately keep this in mind if I think about changing any of my sites! Thanks.

  12. YJ responded on 21 Jan 2009 at 1:37 am #

    Great advice! its always good here to get the ideas of bright individuals!

  13. Ravinderjit responded on 21 Jan 2009 at 1:47 am #

    Nice post Jim, and ofcourse a very good explanation of the subject as usual .
    Thanks.

  14. Dean Saliba responded on 21 Jan 2009 at 4:20 am #

    Very handy tip to know, thank you. :)

  15. accounts responded on 21 Jan 2009 at 4:21 am #

    The issue with 301 redirect is if it’s properly done ,you get the same equity passed on with 3-6months. If not done correctly, then you might never get anything close to the previous site equity. What happened to the pagerank after 6months??

  16. Hardip responded on 21 Jan 2009 at 6:38 am #

    Awesome Information Jim..

    I didn’t believe in 301 redirect before But now I am clear with 301 redirect…Its really effective.

    Thanks for sharing buddy.

    Regards,
    Hardip

  17. Home Security Guy responded on 21 Jan 2009 at 2:29 pm #

    Hey Jim I notice your site only has around 10 backlinks on Yahoo Site Explorer? How come you rank so well for the keyword HIV symptoms?

  18. Jim Karter responded on 22 Jan 2009 at 12:04 am #

    I think you are checking the link for the new site and not the old one. :)

  19. Envirogle responded on 22 Jan 2009 at 3:09 am #

    Wow great example, wish I had this when I was having struggles. I finally got the courage to do it, and then when I saw my first site, disappear from the SERP’s and my new site not moving up quick enough I got scared.

    But sure enough it does come up, but you may not always get back to the rank you were previously, its sad, but it does happen.

  20. Dusan responded on 22 Jan 2009 at 6:27 pm #

    So what would happen, if I would try to redirect 10 sites to a single domain and they all would be in same niche? Woudl that single domain get all the juice? And another question, for how long do I need to keep the redirect on, before it stays that way permanent? I mean do I need to keep the old domain forever so I can keep the backlinks as well?

  21. Jim Karter responded on 22 Jan 2009 at 9:05 pm #

    Dusan, to answer the first part of your questions, I think if you can maintain the full structure of all those 10 domains to your new domain that that domain should get all the link juice of those 10 domains (Though I have never tested anything like this).

    To answer your second questions, I think if you need the link juice of all the domains forever, then you need to keep those domains forever and keep redirecting them. If you can slowly move the links to the new domain and none is pointing to the older one, you can safely let the old domain go.

  22. SEO Tips responded on 23 Jan 2009 at 11:27 am #

    Redirecting URLs can be a really frustrating job especially if you have to redirect over 100 URLs like I had to do when I redesigned my blog. A bit of advice to everyone is find a design and stick with it!

  23. Mayank responded on 25 Jan 2009 at 4:36 am #

    Jim,
    If i redirect from 3 years old domain to recently registered domain then will it pass on the old domain age benefit to the new domain?

  24. Jim Karter responded on 25 Jan 2009 at 11:03 am #

    I don’t think that the age benefit is passed.

  25. Mayank responded on 26 Jan 2009 at 3:34 am #

    Thanks Jim.
    So my new domain can be sand boxed even its 301 redirect from an old site?
    I just want to change domain name of an old good ranking site because its name is not very good.
    So I have purchased a new domain whose name is cool.. Would it be wise enough to use 301 redirect just for the sake of good domain name?

  26. Ruby Web responded on 27 Jan 2009 at 1:43 am #

    I’ve also been thinking of moving my current blog to another domain. It has been running quite successfully but the only problem is that it’s registered under a subdomain, so I wanted to register a full domain for the site to allow it to grow as much as it’s showing potential to.

    This 301 redirect hack seems to be the best option, I was afraid I’d lose readers, links and ranking.

    This couldn’t have come at a better time, I had totally given up on the idea.

  27. jordan responded on 31 Jan 2009 at 8:29 pm #

    so this can work with expired domains that have previous links. if so, this could be pretty helpful for your rankings.

  28. Webmaster responded on 02 Feb 2009 at 8:09 am #

    Thanks for sharing this tips

  29. Stephanie Hijazi responded on 02 Feb 2009 at 10:17 am #

    Awesome Information Jim..

    I didn’t believe in 301 redirect before But now I am clear with 301 redirect…Its really effective.

  30. That Research Guy responded on 02 Feb 2009 at 7:58 pm #

    I tried to use 301 redirects to handle the transition between my previous site and a new Wordpress based site. I wanted viewers to still see the old pages while I completed testing in situ. I was able to set it up so that access from my IP address went to the new site, but others saw the old one. Unfortunately I was only able to make it work for my IP address, not my developer as well, because I couldn’t figure out the correct syntax. But I’d like to use the same idea next time I’m making big changes.

    I used the same idea to redirect individual static pages into the Wordpress pages and posts. It works fine, but I haven’t yet seen the changes show up with new links in Google.

  31. ZK@Internet Marketing Blog responded on 05 Feb 2009 at 1:15 pm #

    I was confused about these redirects as I am not a techie , but your post has cleared a lot of my doubts

  32. Caroline responded on 05 Feb 2009 at 9:45 pm #

    As always, you shared great service that useful for anyone who always steps behind in tech like me. Thank you…

  33. uki responded on 07 Feb 2009 at 6:36 am #

    ist a great job mr jim

  34. Make Affiliate Money responded on 07 Feb 2009 at 4:55 pm #

    Thanks for this info, will look into trying this with some domains not being used at the moment.

    JZ

  35. Gedas responded on 09 Feb 2009 at 9:43 am #

    Thanks for information :) very useful article :)

  36. Mega Champ responded on 09 Feb 2009 at 9:50 pm #

    .htaccess file can do wonders if handled “properly and carefully” otherwise you might end up hurting your website.

  37. titan responded on 18 Feb 2009 at 10:10 pm #

    this is great. I like it.

  38. Ruby Web responded on 19 Feb 2009 at 4:02 am #

    There is definitely a lag associated with 301 redirects, and your experience that you recounted here definitely bears that out. The question that begs to be answered is if it is worth it to have such a drop in rankings (and subsequent loss of traffdic / business) for such a long time?

  39. Meyl responded on 02 Mar 2009 at 4:57 am #

    I manage to hold onto my page rank 3 when I moved using this using this Redirection scripting tool I don’t know if it will work on a higher ranking pages though you obviously have more to loose perhaps ask them there to see how it works?

  40. jayt responded on 06 Mar 2009 at 11:09 pm #

    very useful article

  41. Komodo Dragon responded on 01 Apr 2009 at 9:27 pm #

    I have done a 301 redirect this year, for the first time ever, and I can concur that it does work, it took about 1-2 weeks but then I saw the new website be on the old website’s positions on Google, and yahoo, so I lost nothing in the process.

  42. Ravinderjit Singh responded on 16 Apr 2009 at 6:02 am #

    Jim, I have a 4 months old blogger blog hosted against my domain name on an independent server, not on usual blogpost. I want to do a 301 redirect to a new domain which I intend to purchase. How can I do this without losing my backlinks and PR etc. You have explained above for the websites, can u please tell me how to do it in this case.
    Thanks in advance. :-)

  43. Pete responded on 19 Apr 2009 at 11:37 pm #

    Hey Jim:

    Nice post. The wait after adding it is difficult! What about the slash ” / ” . Mine they added no slash - then I went in and added it and my rep said no ? so then I removed it. What is your take on it? Thanks

  44. staraffiliano responded on 29 May 2009 at 11:06 pm #

    But, how can i do this for blogspot!. Great info,but you’ven’t explained how this can be done for blogger.com.

    If you give that info..than i do really love…if not sorry.

    Now new blogspot name not appearing from post one month in the Google search engines.

  45. Dentist St Petersburg responded on 04 Aug 2009 at 2:45 am #

    It’s really great 301 redirection. I was confuse about this matter but now this point clear with this post. Thanks for share good information.

  46. Dalius responded on 23 Aug 2009 at 4:39 pm #

    Thanks, very useful article

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