Web developer won't 301 redirect to my new website....what can I do?
-
I want to come away from our third party web developer and use a new website with different web developers, however the web developer wont 301 redirect the old url's to the new ones. Is he required to do this by law? Is there away of doing the 301 redirects without him?
Any advice would be much appreciated.
Many thanks,Tom
-
Thanks EGOL, Shane and Peter.
The good news is that we own the domain, what isn't so great is that we don't own the hosting (Big lesson learned here).
Some how I need to take control of the hosting.
Thanks everyone for all your help, I'm truly grateful.
Tom
-
First see who owns the domain. You check the WHOIS to learn that. To check WHOis.... Go here, type your domain in the blank and see who is the "registrant". That person is the official "owner". If it is not you then you will have to ask them to make you the registrant. If they refuse then you have a legal matter.
Sometimes people hide their name from public view in the WHOIS. If the name is not visible then you have a problem.
After that, there are two parts of controlling a domain.
-
Domain registration access: This is done by having an account with the registrar who administers the domain. Places like godaddy, networksolutions are registrars. Look at the WHOIS again and see who is the... Registrar URL You will need a domain registration account with them to control DNS. (DNS points the domain to a server at a hosting company.)
-
Hosting Access: This is where the files of the website are on a webserver. Your .htaccess file is there. Go back to the WHOIS and look at the **Name Server **That will sometimes reveal the hosting company such as godaddy,com networksolutions.com pair.com etc.
-
-
I would highly suggest as EGOl points out looking into hiring a reputable firm to help you with this - As, what I have suggested will only get your domain under your control, to then configure it as you wish.
.htaccess is an Apache server side technology, this is what controls the actual 301 redirect (or through Vhost) but the nameservers of the domain must be pointed to a server you can control first.
http://www.thesitewizard.com/domain/reclaim-website-from-bad-web-designer-host.shtml
This might help clear it up
-
Thanks Shane, that's great advice.
From what I understand to be able to implement 301 redirects I need access to the .htaccess file. Would domain control rights / name servers provide me with this?
-
"If you do, then you can change the nameservers for that domain to your where your new website will be hosted once that website is ready to go live."
Crackingmedia nails it.
Get control of the nameservers - by getting exclusive access to the domain registration account. If you don't know how to do that then hire an experienced webdeveloper or SEO to do it for you.
The problem can be... that the current developer registered the domain in his name. So you might have a legal fight to get it.
In my opinion, 301s must be held in place for a long time. You don't want to trust your current weasel to do this for you.
Take control of the domain.
-
Hi Tom
Along similar lines to Shane's answer but the critical questions is do you own the current domain?
If you do, then you can change the nameservers for that domain to your where your new website will be hosted once that website is ready to go live.
If you are keeping the same domain for your new site, that will be even easier, because your new developers will be able to capture a sitemap of your current site with your current developer and create a list of 301 redirections needed to point the current URL to the new URL for each page. Then, prior to the new site going live when the nameservers are switched to your new host, as long as the 301 redirections are active on the server where your new site is hosted, everything should work smoothly.
I hope that helps based on the info you have given, but do post back if you have more info or need more explanation.
Peter
PS. And as far as I know there is no legal requirement for a developer to provide 301 redirects.
-
If you own the domain - you have the rights to do with it as you please. If he owns it then he does.
I would not say he is "required by law" to do a 301 redirect, but you can forcibly take domain and registrar control, to then do with it as you please - by contacting your domain name registrar or current host. (unless developer is your host, then you will need to go straight to the registrar.
Be sure to have the new host/environment setup prior to this though as you will need to tell the registrar where to send domain control rights (name servers) then at that point you will have domain control at a Host/registrar of you choosing.
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
-
Will URLS With Existing 301 Redirects Be as Powerful As New URLS In Serps?
Most products on our site have redirects to them from years of switching platform and merely trying to get a great and optimised URL for SEO purposes. My question is this: If a product URL has alot of redirects (301's), would it be more beneficial to me to create a duplicated version of the product and start fresh with a new URL? I am not on here trying to gain backlinks but my site is tn nursery dot net (proof:)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tammysons
I need some quality help figuring out what to do.
Tammy0 -
301 redirects for a redesign.
About to completely redo a client's site and I want to make sure I don't loose our link juice. The current site is a old template site from another provider. They host it and we do not have access at all to the site itself, so there will be no transferring of the site from server to server because they feel the site is their property. Basically the site is a monthly service not a product. So this will be a completely new website, including new URL structure. So my question is how do keep the link juice flowing to the new site? I know I need to use 301 redirects, but do I rebuild those old URLs on my site and redirect them to their new counterpart or what? The link profile is not that impressive, maybe 15 back links (all mainly going to the homepage). But they all are local and coming from pretty good domain authority. But its keeping us ahead of our competition. Back story: This is one of my local search clients, we now have them ranking #1 across the board in the local packs. After analyzing the traffic, they are losing 75% of all traffic because of the sites design. So a new site is a must. I build a lot of websites, but have never worried about the back link profile before now. Thanks for all your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | masonrj0 -
Persistent listings or 301 redirects better for SEO?
Imagine these 2 scenarios for an ecommerce listing. 1. A listing that only closes once stock runs out 2. A listing that relists every 7 days assuming stock has run out and doing a 301 redirect to the latest version of that listing (imagine it relists several times) You might ask why on earth we would have the 2nd scenario, but we are an auction site where some listings can't be bid on. In other words those Buy Now only listings are also part of the auction model - they close after 7 days. For me it is a no-brainer that scenario 1 is better for SEO, and I have my ideas on why this is better for SEO than the second scenario such as age, SERP CTR, link equity not being diluted by 301 redirects not changing every 7 days when the listing relists multiple times etc. I was wondering if someone could articulate better than I possibly could why scenario 1 is better for SEO, and why scenario 1 would rank better in the SERPS....would it? Many thanks! Cheers, Simon
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sichristie0 -
Do you get links from new websites?
There's a new industry specific website that looks decent. It's clean and nothing spammy. However, it's so new it's DA is under 10. Is it worth pursuing a link from a site like this? On one hand, there's nothing spammy and it is industry specific. On the other...it's just DA is so terrible (worse than any of our other links), I don't want it to hurt us. Any thoughts? Ruben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
New Google AdWords Keyword Tool - What Can We Do?
What options do we have for keyword research now that Google is switching from the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to the Keyword Planner??
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alhallinan0 -
How can Google index a page that it can't crawl completely?
I recently posted a question regarding a product page that appeared to have no content. [http://www.seomoz.org/q/why-is-ose-showing-now-data-for-this-url] What puzzles me is that this page got indexed anyway. Was it indexed based on Google knowing that there was once content on the page? Was it indexed based on the trust level of our root domain? What are your thoughts? I'm asking not only because I don't know the answer, but because I know the argument is going to be made that if Google indexed the page then it must have been crawlable...therefore we didn't really have a crawlability problem. Why Google index a page it can't crawl?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danatanseo0 -
My homepage doesn't rank anymore. It's been replaced by irrelevant subpages which rank around 100-200 instead of top 5.
Hey guys, I think I got some kind of penalty for my homepage. I was in top5 for my keywords. Then a few days ago, my homepage stopped ranking for anything except searching for my domain name in Google. sitename.com/widget-reviews/ previously ranked #3 for "widget reviews"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wearetribe
but now....
sitename.com/widget-training-for-pet-cats/ is ranking #84 for widget reviews instead. Similarly across all my other keywords, irrelevant, wrong pages are ranking. Did I get some kind of penalty?0 -
301 redirect help
Hey guys, I normally work in WordPress and just use a 301 redirect plugin. I bought a site and rather than maintain two similar ones have decided to redirect one to the other. I am having trouble with the .htaccess file. Here is an example. These are two redirects: redirect 301 /category/models/next/2
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DanDeceuster
redirect 301 /category/models I want both of these URLs to redirect to the same URL of the new site. However, the /category/models is the only one working. It redirects to the new page just fine. The /category/models/next/2 is redirecting to nearly the same URL on the new site, only it is adding /next/2 to the end and that is bringing up a 404. Why is it adding /next/2 to the new URL? How can I fix this? There are several doing this. Help appreciated!0