Does redirecting affect Search Engine results?
September 13, 2010 5:04 PM Subscribe
Are my really good search engine rankings going to change if I move from redirecting to hosting?
If you search for my website it comes up almost first almost always on Google. Right now the website, www.myWebsite.com, redirects to a parent site, www.parentsite.com, where it sits in a directory. So the address is really www.parentsite.com/myWebsite.
I'm a bit of a boob when it comes to this stuff: if I change it so that www.website.com no longer redirects, will it affect my search engine rankings?
If you search for my website it comes up almost first almost always on Google. Right now the website, www.myWebsite.com, redirects to a parent site, www.parentsite.com, where it sits in a directory. So the address is really www.parentsite.com/myWebsite.
I'm a bit of a boob when it comes to this stuff: if I change it so that www.website.com no longer redirects, will it affect my search engine rankings?
Response by poster: Whoops!. Yes, I mean that searching for related subject matter via keywords yields the top spot on Google.
posted by OlivesAndTurkishCoffee at 5:25 PM on September 13, 2010
posted by OlivesAndTurkishCoffee at 5:25 PM on September 13, 2010
I would assume that if you switch domains your web presence will no longer enjoy a higher Google ranking, and that your existing ranking on the Google front page is due to the popularity/quality/credibility of your current parent site. A number of different factors contribute to Google rankings, and one of them is how many credible, quality sites link to your domain. Presumably, your current parent site is linked to by a lot of other sites, which is why you enjoy a higher ranking.
Not all is lost if you move to your own unique domain. For one thing, you can actually work on optimizing the different pages of your website with keyword-rich terms that will show up on Google - it may seem surprising, but not many people do this. The tricky part is getting people to link to your site. You can speed the process up by linking to yourself on Squidoo and Ezine Articles.
However, the best method for link pollination is to create credible, quality content that other people find valuable and will link to. If you are targeting a specific community, and you have created this rich content that will actually help people out, you can promote your website through Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn; this will drive people to your site.
It's tough to do - most people will tune out self-promoters on Twitter for example, so it's a lot of hard work building trust and building relationships.
posted by KokuRyu at 9:22 PM on September 13, 2010
Not all is lost if you move to your own unique domain. For one thing, you can actually work on optimizing the different pages of your website with keyword-rich terms that will show up on Google - it may seem surprising, but not many people do this. The tricky part is getting people to link to your site. You can speed the process up by linking to yourself on Squidoo and Ezine Articles.
However, the best method for link pollination is to create credible, quality content that other people find valuable and will link to. If you are targeting a specific community, and you have created this rich content that will actually help people out, you can promote your website through Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn; this will drive people to your site.
It's tough to do - most people will tune out self-promoters on Twitter for example, so it's a lot of hard work building trust and building relationships.
posted by KokuRyu at 9:22 PM on September 13, 2010
Best answer: If you correctly set up a server-side 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one, you should not see any reduction in your Google rankings. Here's how.
posted by spilon at 9:28 PM on September 13, 2010 [2 favorites]
posted by spilon at 9:28 PM on September 13, 2010 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: super! thanks folks. I will get the 301 thing done!
posted by OlivesAndTurkishCoffee at 5:34 AM on September 14, 2010
posted by OlivesAndTurkishCoffee at 5:34 AM on September 14, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
Won't that almost always true?
Search for obscurewebsite.com.
It's a much bigger deal if search for a certain subject matter yields the top spot on google. But searching for a specific website URL would usually yield that URL. So changing it shouldn't matter that much.
Or perhaps your question needs some clarification.
posted by alms at 5:11 PM on September 13, 2010