Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Any way around buying hosting for an old domain to 301 redirect to a new domain?
-
Howdy.
I have just read this QA thread, so I think I have my answer. But I'm going to ask anyway!
Basically DomainA.com is being retired, and DomainB.com is going to be launched.
We're going to have to redirect numerous URLs from DomainA.com to DomainB.com. I think the way to go about this is to continue paying for hosting for DomainA.com, serving a .htaccess from that hosting account, and then hosting DomainB.com separately.
Anybody know of a way to avoid paying for hosting a .htaccess file on DomainA.com?
Thanks!
-
If I am understanding correctly you want people to access DomainA.com when they go to DomainB.com? If this is the case, you could set up DomainB.com as a Domain Forward to DomainA.com.
For instance a Client I have right now has www.drcharlescrane.com and www.drcharlescrane.net. Hosting is only set up for .com and we domain forward .net.
You can also have this set up as a domain forwarding with mask so if you wanted the user would actually see in the URL domainb.com but pulling domaina.com's content.
I hope this makes sense and if you need further clarification let me know. Also where is your domain registered. I use Godaddy primarily to the low costs for domains. Here is a how to domain forward provided by them and more information on the topic - http://help.godaddy.com/article/422
-
DNS, resolves a name to a ip number,
that ip number should route to your website. Inthe headers of the resquest is the domain name, your web site should be configured to accept either all requests on a ip number and port or filtered by host headers (domains names), add all teh host headers needed, then in htaccess 30 to the pirmary domain name.
-
Thank you Alan. Are you suggesting that via DNS records I have DomainA.com "live" in the same place as DomainB.com, and then host the .htaccess on DomainB.com's hosting space?
So somebody requests DomainA.com, the DNS points to the hosting for DomainB.com, and then the .htaccess for DomainB.com can process the original DomainA.com request?
-
Thanks, but does this help with 301s for inner pages?
-
I had just the same experience. It was only one occasion but I did nothing more to the site then putting it under a new account on my shared hosting, so only the last digit of the ip has changed. I saw a drop in rankings however the original I gained back the original rankings a few weeks later.
-
I cant say it does, but when I changed ips i had a drop in rankings. But i cant prove it was the change in ip
but there is some logic to it,
A domain name is resolved to a ip address to find the website, the domain name is sent in the header. Your web site accepts a connection on a socket, ip number and port 123.123.123.123:80, it then looks in the header for the domain name
so a SE will see a difference, it will know this is not the same address -
100% disagree.
Most of the biggest websites in the world use DNS load balancing which will change the IP address of the server every request.
301 redirects lose a small amount of juice but IP changes don't.
Hosting changes don't (assuming no errors or outages).
Who-is changes do, but that is not relevant here.
-
1. you need to make a change to your DNS settings.
where every you registered your domain, you ned to change your Arecord to point at the correct ip number
2. you need to do a 301 redirect to primary domain.
-
If you have Cpanel here are the instructions. For godaddy or plesk call your host and tell them what you are trying to do.
Log into where you purchased domain A and forward it to the name servers at B's hosting. Then go into B Cpanel and click on add on domains. Add your domain. Once the domain has been added go to domain redirects and redirect your old domain to new.
For type choose permanent 301
Choose the domain you want to redirect from the drop down. Next manually type in your new domain name where it says "redirects to".
-
I think I disagree as moving site A's hosting to a new ip causes a drop in rankings.
Never heard about this before. I think this is not true, i have chagned IP's in the past without any consequences.
-
You shouldn't have to continue to pay for hosting for the site you are getting rid of, just keep renewing the domain name and then 301 it to the new site and you should be fine.
-
Thank you. I'm actually not understanding. How do I Park A on B. What is "explicit .htaccess"?
-
There is no penalty or loss for changing an IP address. There are many legitimat reasons for doing that. IP changes often occr when your host moves your site to a different server, or, when you upgrade your hosting package, or move to a different hosting service. No worries at all about new IPs.
-
The .htaccess that have the information about the A domain is inside B hosting, so, you don't need anymore A hosting when you do all the redirections.
I think this post can help:
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2067216/The-10-Step-Site-Migration-Process
bye
-
Egol has usually got great answers that woths linstening to, this time however I think I disagree as moving site A's hosting to a new ip causes a drop in rankings. Put the redirection on top of that and you get some more fallback. I think in the above case I would not change the hosting but do the redirect and wait for google to notice the change. Maybe a few months later I would give up site A's original hosting and migrate it to site B's hosting to be able to keep the original urls live for some more time.
-
Park A on B and redirect with explicit .htaccess.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Sudden drop in Rankings after 301 redirect
Greetings to Moz Community. Couple of months back, I have redirected my old blog to a new URL with 301 redirect because of spammy links pointed to my old blog. I have transfer all the posts manually, changed the permalink structure and 301 redirected every individual URL. All the ranking were boosted within couple of weeks and regained the traffic. After a month I have observed, the links pointed to old site are showing up in Webmaster Tools for the new domain. I was shocked (no previous experience) and again Disavowed all links. Today, all the positions went down for new domain. My questions are: 1. Did the Disavow tool worked this time with new domain? All the links pointed to old domain were devaluated? Is this the reason for ranking drop? Or 2. 301 Old domain with Unnatural links causes the issue? 3. Removing 301 will help to regain few keyword positions? I'm taking this as a case study. Already removed the 301 redirect. Looking for solid discussion.Thanks.
Technical SEO | | praveen4390 -
Redirect URLS with 301 twice
Hello, I had asked my client to ask her web developer to move to a more simplified URL structure. There was a folder called "home" after the root which served no purpose. I asked for the URLs to be redirected using 301 to the new URLs which did not have this structure. However, the web developer didn't agree and decided to just rename the "home" folder "p". I don't know why he did this. We argued the case and he then created the URL structure we wanted. Initially he had 301 redirected the old URLS (the one with "Home") to his new version (the one with the "p"). When we asked for the more simplified URL after arguing, he just redirected all the "p" URLS to the PAGE NOT FOUND. However, remember, all the original URLs are now being redirected to the PAGE NOT FOUND as a result. The problems I see are these unless he redirects again: The new simplified URLS have to start from scratch to rank 2)We have duplicated content - two URLs with the same content Customers clicking products in the SERPs will currently find that they are being redirect to the 404 page. I understand that redirection has to occur but my questions are these: Is it ok to redirect twice with 301 - so old URL to the "p" version then to final simplified version. Will link juice be lost doing this twice? If he redirects from the original URLS to the final version missing out the "p" version, what should happen to the "p" version - they are currently indexed. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | AL123al0 -
Best Practice on 301 Redirect - Images
We have two sites that sell the same products. We have decided to retire one of the sites as we'd like to focus on one property. I know best practice is to redirect apples to apples, which in our case is easily done since the sites sold the same thing. www.SiteABC.com/ProductA can be redirected to www.SiteXYZ.com/ProductA. My question is how far does that thinking go regarding images? Each product has a main product page, of course, and then up to 6 images in some cases. Is it necessary to redirect www.SiteABC.com/ProductA-Image1.jpg to www.SiteXYZ.com/ProductA-Image1.jpg? Or can they all be redirected to just the product page?
Technical SEO | | Natitude0 -
301 redirect not working
Hi there! I have recently moved a domain that has been indexed by google and setup redirects so that it forwards to the new domain. It seems like the only redirect that actually is working is the canonical and main domain but every other page and or page nested within a folder are not working. Here is an example of some of the redirects. Am I doing this wrong? It seems to be going to the new domain but can't find the actual pages.... RewriteEngine On
Technical SEO | | twotd
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !agoodsweep.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://agoodsweep.com/$1 [L,R=301]
redirect 301 woodstoveservicerepair.html http://agoodsweep.com/woodstoveservicerepair/
redirect 301 /westchesterchimney.html http://agoodsweep.com/west-chester-chimney/ Thanks in advance for any help!!0 -
How do I fix a 301 Redirect Loop?
Saturday I waas doing some correcting of some duplicate titles, including nofollowing tags, etc. (my main problem was duplicate titles due to tags and categories being indexed). Now this morning I see that one of my pages refuses to load, citing a 301 redirect loop. http://www.incredibleinfant.com/feeding/switching-baby-formula/ Originally, the page was posted under the wrong category. http://www.incredibleinfant.com/uncategorized/switching-baby-formula I resaved it under the correct category (feeding) and now it won't load. Can someone help me figure out how to correct this mess? Thanks so much Heather
Technical SEO | | Gotmoxie0 -
Can you 301 redirect a page to an already existing/old page ?
If you delete a page (say a sub department/category page on an ecommerce store) should you 301 redirect its url to the nearest equivalent page still on the site or just delete and forget about it ? Generally should you try and 301 redirect any old pages your deleting if you can find suitable page with similar content to redirect to. Wont G consider it weird if you say a page has moved permenantly to such and such an address if that page/address existed before ? I presume its fine since say in the scenario of consolidating departments on your store you want to redirect the department page your going to delete to the existing pages/department you are consolidating old departments products into ?
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
How many jumps between 301 redirects is acceptable?
For example, I have a page A that should be redirected to page D, but instead A redirects to B, B redirects to C and C redirects to D. It's something I came across and wondering if its worth the dev time to change it. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | pbrothers240 -
301 Redirect vs Domain Alias
We have hundreds of domains which are either alternate spelling of our primary domain or close keyword names we didn't want our competitor to get before us. The primary domain is running on a dedicated Windows server running IIS6 and set to a static IP. Since it is a static IP and not using host headers any domain pointed to the static IP will immediately show the contents of the site, however the domain will be whatever was typed. Which could be the primary domain or an alias. Two concerns. First, is it possible that Google would penalize us for the alias domains or dilute our primary domain "juice"? Second, we need to properly track traffic from the alias domains. We could make unique content for those performing well and sell or let expire those that are sending no traffic. It's not my goal to use the alias domains to artificially pump up our primary domain. We have them for spelling errors and direct traffic. What is the best practice for handling one or both of these issues?
Technical SEO | | briankb0