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
-
Blog posts and 3rd hierarchy pages weigh same as per Google?
Our blogs.website.com has been a sub-directory since 2 years as website.com/blog. Now we have blog posts with URLs website.com/blog/blog-post-1. This blog is located at different place technically, away from website. Now my doubt is whether the blog-posts have equal weightage at Google just like other 3rd hierarchy level pages of website like website.com/page1/topic2. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz1 -
.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 -
Too many 301 redirects?
Hey, My company currently has one chief website with about 500-600 other domains that all feature the same material as the chief website. These domains have been around for about 5 years and have actually picked up some link traffic. I have all of these identical web-pages utilizing rel=canonical but I was wondering if I would be better served, from SEO purposes, to 301 redirect all of these sites to their respective pages on our chief website? If I add 500 301 redirects, will the major search engines consider this to be black-hat link-building even though the sites are related and technically already feature the same content? For an example, the chief website is www.1099pro.com and I would 301 redirect the below sites to the chief site: 1099softwarepro.com 1099softwarepro.info 1099softwarepro.net 1099softwarepro.biz 1099softwareprofessionals.com 1099softwareprofessionals.info ...you get the point
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Stew2220 -
Have You Seen MOZU.com?
I'm not a business lawyer but has Moz been in the marketplace long enough to take issue with this? Volusion's new mid-to-enterprise level eCommerce platform is http://www.mozu.com/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AWCthreads0 -
Redirect 301
Hi, I `m redirecting some pages in htaccess The first 15 pages that i redirected it worked. But the last 3 dont work, and i cant figure it out why it is not working. Redirect 301 /analyseverktoy/ /webanalyse
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SGacic
Redirect 301 /index.php/ledige-stillinger/ /
Redirect 301 /?page_id=352/ / Anu suggestions?0 -
Temporary Redirects on Magento
I've recently taken over a client who uses the Magento platform and there was definitely a duplicate issue with his homepage. It redirected www to non www, however the canonical tag was setup wrong and pointing to the www version. When I looked at OSE for both versions the non www has only 7 linking domains and a page authority of 32. The www version has 24 linking domains and page authority of 39. As the domain is fairly new, I decided to redirect the non www to www and keep the canonical the same. (I changed the internal linking structure etc). When I run both URLs through this tool: http://www.ragepank.com/redirect-... it's returning a whole bunch of 302, rather than 301 redirects. What's the deal with that? Is that a Magento setting that I can fix or something a little harder? I'm not sure if it's proper etiquette to post the URL of a client, so if that would help and is OK, please let me know. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bradkrussell1 -
Wordpress Titles
My question is about long url titles, my client is using wordpress and the rankings are going well apart from two, which for some reason just wont move. After using some of the tools available on SEO moz which i have found very helpful I have spotted a re-occuring warning throughout the site, the titles, in word press you have this setting (below) page title : %page_title% | %blog_title% My question is my client has quite good brand online but I done want to impact this. The problem I have is that I have a Keyword in the title then the clients company name which is three words and takes up a lot of space. I am thinking about removing this but in two minds so i was kinda hoping for a bit of advice as this looks like a standard in wordpress. Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomBarker820 -
Blogs with different focuses
Suppose I got a blog about cooking and another about computers. What's the best architecture for SEO ? mysite.com/cooking-blog mysite.com/computers-blog OR cooking-blog.mysite.com computers-blog.mysite.com ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marcelocustodio0