Redirect posts from a wordpress.com blog over to a self-hosted blog
-
Hi All
I started a wordpress.com blog with a few posts on it, and these have been shared using social media so links to these exist on Facebook and Twitter.
I've decided that its going to be better and more effective to have the blog on my primary domain.
How would I setup a redirect from the wordpress.com blog to my self hosted blog? Normally I'd write a .htaccess file but I'm unable to do that over at wordpress.com.
I can't even see an option to install plugins, otherwise I would have used the "Redirector" plugin.
-
This is why I mentioned it might be worth my while re-arranging paragraphs from the articles, maybe adding some relevant images and changing the content slightly to avoid any cross domain duplication problems.
I might go ahead and do as Highland is suggesting, I was hoping that wasn't the only way to do it.
-
Hi Ben
No problem... thanks for clarifying. Seems like the only way to do it and have anything "redirect" is to have some sort of intermediate step.
This is a little wild, but you could;
- Create your middle blog with matching content
- Redirect wordpress.com to the middle blog with matching URLs and content
- Then cross domain rel=canonical the middle blog to the final destination with the same content.
Maybe that's worth a try, I don't see any dup penalties cause only the final site is being "credited" by you as the source, but you end up with a chain of redirects, which is not recommended, but Matt Cutts has said they can handle 2-3 most of the time.
-Dan
-
I wouldn't just drop the old site. it has SEO momentum and you want to capture as much of that momentum as you can before you drop it (otherwise you need to build it from scratch on your new site).
There's going to be penalties in doing it either way. You're going to have duplicate penalty until the old site gets de-indexed.
-
Thank you both for your replies.
Highland, I was hoping to eradicate the sitename.wordpress.com blog in the coming month. The blog in question only has 3 articles at the moment so I'm not sure if I should just move the articles to the self-hosted blog; amend the content slightly (so the article isn't the same as sitename.wordpress.com), delete the wordpress.com blog and let Google and other search engines re-index the page on my self-hosted blog... or would this cause more hassle and possible penalties?
Sorry Dan I probably should have said before that the domain I'm wanting to redirect to is an existing site with pages already setup etc. I don't have access to the DNS and I have to contact BT through their online form and wait 3 days for them to get back to me per DNS change request so that's not a viable option, but I appreciate the information provided, it was certainly worth a read.
-
Hi Ben
Highland's response is definitely a good "poor man's" way, and there's nothing wrong with it at all.
WordPress now offers site redirects through the wordpress store - I believe it's like $12 a year.
There is also this domain mapping trick, which seems like it would still work, but they do say its a little complicated.
-Dan
-
Wordpress.com is a whole different beast from the Wordpress software. WP.com uses the WP software and shoves it into a shared hosting environment. So you can't do most things you can do elsewhere.
If you are using your own domain, just move your blog off WP.com and host it yourself. You can retain the same URL structure doing this.
If you're using myblog.wordpress.com, you're a LOT more limited. My suggestion would be to do a poor man's 301. Copy your content to the new blog, then gut the old URL and put a link to the new URL. This is not the preferred method but it lets you keep your traffic and still pass some SEO. Since it's not duplicate, it will eventually cause your new page to rise and the old to fade.
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
-
Sever SERP Issues on Teem.com (Long Post)
I work for Teem.com. Here is the story:We used to be Eventboard.io and we enjoyed strong rankings and a healthy organic presence. We changed our name, our website, and expanded upon on our product offerings and launched Teem.com. A lot of content was very similar from Eventboard.io. We had 11 of our big keywords ranking in the top 3 positions. We launched the new website in early October of 2016.Here is what we have done: We setup a network of 301 redirects for the homepage, company pages, events page, blog posts, and each and every long tail page. Everything from the old site had a new place to live on the new site with very similar content. This list was then passed to our server/it folk to implement (we run a StaticPress site so we don't control those from within WordPress). Both the old and new site are WordPress websites. Setup a site domain move through Google Search Console Combed through Teem.com to take care of SEO issues using various tools. We know there are still some issues (speed, etc.) that aren't helping us, but we are in a good state overall in terms of technical SEO. Deep dive into the domain name history, backlinks, internal linking (which could be better). Developed more long-tail content (more coming). Here is what is weird: We have almost no organic traffic (or traction) since our rebrand. We understood we would be hit hard as the domain name was changed, the content changed, and the CMS was revamped. The only real organic search traffic we get is branded to our old name (which is luckily the name of one of our products): Eventboard. We rank well for this and see high conversion from this keyword. We rank very well for "conference room displays" on Bing for our long tail and home page, but we show up at position 23 for our iTunes app page on Google and 33 for the long tail page. We dominate in bing for our company name "Teem" and finally show up Google for our Facebook page in position 13th. Our website is way way down the list (beyond page 5) for the exact company name with super low competition. Site performance has been good, user feedback has been good, site uptime has been great. No red flags here. No blaring errors in search console besides maybe a few 404 pages that are cleaned up every few weeks. We have no idea what to do. Have engaged with multiple SEO agencies. Been told over and over to be patient because of the changes we have made, but we still see no progress 6 months later.We think the issue might be related to something misfiring with our 301 redirects, based on some referral information.Any insight would be greatly, greatly appreciated. We are stumped. Thanks for any help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brycedmorgan0 -
Should I write a new page or a blog post?
I am trying to rank for a local SEO term on a website for a national company. Should I write an optimized blog post, or optimized site page? Does it make a difference? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aj6130 -
.Com version of my site is ranking better than .co.uk for my UK Website for branded search. 301 redirect mess
Dear Mozzers, I have an issue with my UK Website (short url is - http://goo.gl/dJ7IgD ) whereby when I type my company name in to google.co.uk search the .com version returns in Search as opposed to the .co.uk and from looking at open site explorer the page rank of the .com is higher than the .co.uk ?. Infact I cant even see the .co.uk homepage version but other pages from my site. The .com version is also 301'd to the .co.uk. From looking at Open Site Explorer, I have noticed that we have more links pointing to .com as opposed to .co.uk. Alot of these are from our own separate microsites which we closed down last year and I have noticed the IT company who closed them down for some reason 301'd them to the .com version of our site as opposed to the .co.uk but If I look in http://httpstatus.io/ (http status checker tool) to check one of these mircosites it shows - 301 - 302 - 200 status codes which to me looks wrong ?. I am wondering what it should read ... e.g should it just be a 301 to a 200 status code ?. My Website short url is - http://goo.gl/dJ7IgD and an example of some of 10 microsites we closed down last year which seems to be redirected to .com is http://goo.gl/BkcIjy and http://goo.gl/kogJ02 As these were redirected almost a year ago - it is okay if I now get them redirected to the .co.uk version of my site or what should I do ? They currently redirect to the home page but given that each of the microsites are based on an individual category of my main site , would it be better to 301 them to the relevant category on my site. My only concern is that , may cause to much internal linking and therefore I wont have enough links on my homepage ? How would you suggest I go about building up my .co.uk authority so it ranks betters than the .com- I am guessing this is obviously affecting my rankings and I am losing link juice with all this. Any advice greatly appreciated . thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Switching from .co to com?
I have a site that does pretty well on a .co domain, but would like to switch to over .com (we own the .com already). If we were to transfer .com and 301 redirect all the .co pages over to their .com version, would we suffer at all? What would you guys recommend?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | StickyWebz0 -
International Image SEO - one host vs multiple hosts
I've got 3 sites (same name) located in Australia, US and UK. Currently these sites are all pulling images (I own) from 1 location. I'd like to create image XML sitemaps for each of these sites. As I see it, my options are: 1. Keeping the images hosted in the 1 place and creating image XML sitemaps for each of the 3 sites (which seems to be technically ok because https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/178636?hl=en&ref_topic=20986 states that if the image URL isn't on the same domain, both domains need to be verified in Webmaster Tools). However, is there a risk here that the sitemaps will conflict because they are pulling from images on the same host? 2. Hosting the images locally (ie. the same images will be hosted in 3 locations) and applying hreflang in the sitemap. Does anyone know which of these options are best (obviously #1 would be more convenient), or whether there are any other options for attacking this issue? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | oline1230 -
Sidewide footer links to latest blog posts
Dear Friends I hope you can answer my questions. We are launching a new site and on the footer (sidewide) we list all new blog posts (limit 5 links - blog title), do you think we have any problems with that part of the website? I am concerned because all new blog post title will appear on all pages' footer and it will be marked as spammed. We just want visitors to be noticed about new blogs post on our site. Thank you,Tran
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SteveTran20130 -
Is there an easy way to create this type of post, wordpress?
I run a site that is in Google news and built on wordpress. I have seen this type of post on a few sites http://searchengineland.com/searchcap-the-day-in-search-december-21-2012-143315 Its basically a summary of posts for that day or week etc I am wondering, does anyone know of an easy way to create these types of pages? At the moment we simply copy and paste and create all links manually. Im wondering, is there a plugin that allows you to create a post like this but quicker? Any ideas at all would be great Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters0 -
Can a Hosting provider that also hosts adult content sites negatively affect our SEO rankings on a non-adult site hosted on same platform?
We're considering moving a site to a host that also offers hosting for adult websites. Can this have a negative affect on SEO, if our hosting company is in any way associated with adult websites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | grapevinemktg0