301 redirect advice

[emmylou74]

Hi - I was wondering if anyone could give me a little advice. I have two websites - the first one used to rank high within the first two on the first page for my keywords. I am now losing my position fast and have slipped to the bottom of page 2 = quite a big loss in income. Its totally my fault becaue I have never done any SEO work on it.

I have a second website that I opened with the same web hosts as the first. But service and their web hosting is truly awful and they have not kept up with the times so I am moving to another web host. I want this one to be my main website.

If I do a 301 re-direct of my first website to the new website and its domain will be a sub domain - will that affect googles view on it badly?

Or am I just better opening it as another website on the new host?

Any help for someone who is massively technically/seo dumb would be very much appreciated

 

[webgeek]

It's up to you whether you want the new site to engulf the old one via subdomain, subfolder, or individual pages.

Yes, you would set up the content on the new site and then point the old to the new. Personally, I've had the best luck doing a page-by-page approach, creating an old to new mapping in excel and then using that to make my redirects

 

[Websitehandyman]

If you happy with both hosts then yes two different hosts are better the having two sites on one host SEO wise.

A few reasons for that but best one if neither will be associate so you can link full juice from one to the other.

 

[lissya212]

So essentially, you've moved the site to a new host. You haven't uploaded a load of pages that were dead on the old server and now searchers are hitting the old pages (404)? If the site is set up on a new host, can't you edit the htaccess file to re-direct (301) all 404's?[FONT=&quot][/FONT]

 

[emmylou74]

So essentially, you've moved the site to a new host. You haven't uploaded a load of pages that were dead on the old server and now searchers are hitting the old pages (404)? If the site is set up on a new host, can't you edit the htaccess file to re-direct (301) all 404's?

okay thats like reading a whole different language to me .

I have moved the new website to a new host. My main website is still with the old host. I was considering pointing the old website to the new one as a sub domain and doing a 301 re-direct. But thinking now why would I need a 301 re-direct for that.

But to make things easy for my easily confused brain I am just going to keep the two sites seperate and have them both moved from the un suitable hosting company to a better one.

 

[veronicaZora]

301 redirect is the ideal method to retain your current
search engine rankings when redirecting web pages or a web
site.

1. To create a .htaccess file, open notepad, name and save
the file as .htaccess (there is no extension).

2. If you already have a .htaccess file on your server,
download it to your desktop for editing.

3. Place this code in your .htaccess file

4. If the .htaccess file already has lines of code in it,
skip a line, then add the above code.

5. Save the .htaccess file

6. Upload this file to the root folder of your server.

7. Test it by typing in the old address to the page you've
changed. You should be immediately taken to the new
location.