Migrating or upgrading a website - keeping your rank

Moving or redeveloping your existing site can be a tricky task.

 

There are many things to look out for so you dont loose your ranking on Google and other Search Engines.

Imagine that you have a huge site with over 2000 pages each page has a unique name (called a URL)

What will happen to your search rankings when you move the site?

How do you ensure that a page on the old site gets redirected to the new site thus avoiding the dreaded "404 page not found"

The answer is 301 redirects

Every site has a htaccess file which can control your sites URLS

So in the case of a site with lots and lots of links and really good position in searches we at On Target ensure that your old site links to the new one

Here is an example:

RedirectMatch 301 ^/technique/beach-start.asp$ http://www.jemhall.com/technique/item/clew-1st-beach-start.html
RedirectMatch 301 ^/technique/one-handed-carve-gybe.asp$ http://www.jemhall.com/technique/item/carve-gybe.html
RedirectMatch 301 ^/technique/planing-through-lulls.asp$ http://www.jemhall.com/technique.html
RedirectMatch 301 ^/technique/overpowered-gybe.asp$ http://www.jemhall.com/technique/item/carve-gybe.html

The old site was a .asp site - the htaccess file now redirects the search engine to the new page - the result no loss of rank!

If you have had a site redeveloped and you are now facing this problem get in touch and let us fix it!