Concern about Site Redirect upgrade

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  freeassoc · Member · Mar 25, 2014 at 6:20 pm

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  We are moving a clilent’s blog from wordpress.com to a self-hosted site using wordpress.org software. Using the Site Redirect upgrade (discussed here: http://en.support.wordpress.com/site-redirect/) , will we maintain our SEO rankings? Does the Google “juice” get passed along when we use that service? Or will we lose something in the process? It’s important we maintain our ranking. I need as definitive and answer to this as possible so we can make an informed decision. Thank you!

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

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  freeassoc · Member · Mar 25, 2014 at 6:24 pm

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  The forum’s assumption is that the blog I need help with is my own, but that’s not the case (thought it will be, eventually). The blog I need help with is begreenpackaging.wordpress.com in case that affects any recommendations.

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  timethief · Member · Mar 25, 2014 at 6:31 pm

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  The forum provides the URL and I’m glad it does. That’s because about 30% of the people posting here are actually asking WordPress.ORG support questions and many of those who are WordPress.com bloggers fail to post their URLs.

  To answer your question it takes about 3 months for Google to re-index any site that has a substantial amount of content. Once that’s done the pagerank and positioning in the SERPs is usually they same as it was before. What the site redirect does is seamless redirection ie. wherever any of the original URLs are clicked anywhere on the internet the visitors are seamlessly redirected to the same content under the new URLs.

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  freeassoc · Member · Mar 25, 2014 at 6:43 pm

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  Thanks, timethief. The goal is not to lose the momentum for 3 months while Google reindexes the site.

  After posting here, I found this page which makes it pretty clear. It says, “The redirection will work just as smoothly with search engines as it does with your visitors, so your search engine ranking will not be affected.”

  But it also says “(may require setup on new site).” I am guessing this may refer to requiring the identical file structure on the new site, using all the date folders that WP.com uses. Do you know if that’s accurate?

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  timethief · Member · Mar 25, 2014 at 6:47 pm

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  I’m aware of that statement as I’m up close and personal with all support documentation. What I shared was based on experience.