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Moving a website to a new URL
Comments
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You should probably also make it blatant to visitors that they should click through to your new site, maybe offer a sweetener to anyone who does0
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You should probably also make it blatant to visitors that they should click through to your new site, maybe offer a sweetener to anyone who does
The refresh redirect automatically transfers visitors to the new site. Since each page is identical to its twin on the new site, all you notice (if anything) is the URL in the address bar changing.
Is your suggestion to cater for people who would not be automatically redirected to the new site? What could cause the auto redirect not to work for them?0 -
For the vast majority of people, the redirect will happen. For those people who do things with their browsers that would stop this happening ... I guess they probably aren't your target market anyway, so don't worry about it.
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Is your suggestion to cater for people who would not be automatically redirected to the new site? What could cause the auto redirect not to work for them?
It's a client-side redirect, you don't control the client, so you cannot guarantee they'll get redirected. Spiders may be smart or dumb, text browsers (eg for partially sighted) or other specialist browsers may or may not handle the redirect - it's their choice whether or not to recognise it.
The other thing is that if people are used to typing xxx.freeserve.co.uk to find you, then they will continue to do so, even if there's a redirect in place and the address bar automagically changes. A call to action getting them to bookmark the new site will help break that behaviour, especially if there's an incentive - and so you don't lose all those customers when the original site does vanish (like geocities, !!!!!!!!!, can't help but think freeserve sites days are numbered!)0 -
have you ever thought that if someone goes to xxx.freeserve.co.uk and gets redirected to http://newURL/n.htm then may leave if the browser bar shows http://newURL/n.htm as to them they are on a different site, even if pages look the same as they could think your original site has been hacked and they are directed to a hackers phishing site.
It is better taking down the pages on the old site and just add a index page using the below code
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-gb">
<meta HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" content="5; url=http://newURL/n.htm">
<style type="text/css">
.style1 {
font-size: large;
text-align: center;
}
</style>
</head>
<p class="style1">Redirecting you to our new and better site. Hold on a mo!</p>0 -
The other thing is that if people are used to typing xxx.freeserve.co.uk to find you, then they will continue to do so, even if there's a redirect in place and the address bar automatically changes.It is better taking down the pages on the old site and just add a index page using the below code
Most visitors arrive via a search engine and do not alight on the index page.0 -
Most visitors arrive via a search engine and do not alight on the index page.
but using that code will mean the new site would be indexed by google, also use the google webmaster tools to have the googlebot index new site. have 2 sites with same content will confuse google and even changing the meta tags wont help, infact it will do more harm0 -
but using that code will mean the new site would be indexed by google, also use the google webmaster tools to have the googlebot index new site.
I do have refresh code - on every page. And yes, I have done Webmaster.... have 2 sites with same content will confuse google and even changing the meta tags wont help, infact it will do more harm
That's what the <link rel="canonical" href="http://newURL/n.htm"></link> tags are for - to tell Google which of the two duplicates of each page to index. Have I got that wrong?
EDIT: As well as putting <link rel="canonical" href="http://newURL/n.htm"> on each page on the old site, I have now put the same <link rel="canonical" href="http://newURL/n.htm"> on each page on the new (as advised here).0 -
That's what the <link rel="canonical" href="http://newURL/n.htm"></link> tags are for - to tell Google which of the two duplicates of each page to index. Have I got that wrong?
No but once your new site is indexed and the old site drops down the rankings you'd need to ditch the old site with a simple "we've moved" message and a link.
Once you start adding new content Google will start moving you up or down the rankings again.0
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