Redirect 301 – best practice and logic ?

• 

  costerquentin · Member · Dec 11, 2023 at 1:40 pm

  • Copy link
  • Add topic to favorites

  Hello erveryone,

  I’m building a new website on the staging environnement of WordPress.com. When ready, I plan to replace the old website with this staging version and also change the domain name.

  In order to keep the SEO ranking, I plan to do many 301 redirections.

  Regarding the redirection, I have some questions :

  1. What would be the best way to redirect on WordPress.com ? Plugin ? In house solution ? htaccess ? The domain name and the urls will be different so I will need to redirect (manually maybe) each old page to its new one. There are multiple solutions and I don’t know what to choose ?
  2. When replacing the old website with the new one, do I still have access to the old somehow ? Do I need to make a list of the old url’s (for the redirect) before swapping the website ?

  It’s crucial that my ranking stays the same after updating my website so I’m trying to find the best solution for setting up redirections.

  Thank you for your help and ideas !

  Quentin

• 

  supernovia · Staff · Dec 12, 2023 at 12:20 am

  • Copy link

  Hey there, I’m not a 301 expert but I can share this much:

  The domain name and the urls will be different so I will need to redirect (manually maybe) each old page to its new one. There are multiple solutions and I don’t know what to choose ?

  Will you be able to connect the old domain to the new one? If so, we’ll automatically redirect that with 301, so long as you make the new name primary. And we’ll handle what individual URL redirects we can too.

  You mentioned the urls will be different, but if you’re keeping the same page/post names (importing content is a great way to go about that), the system will usually be able to redirect those for you, too, so long as you connect both domains and have the new one set to Primary. If you need to redirect beyond the automated stuff, there are plugins you can use.

  When replacing the old website with the new one, do I still have access to the old somehow ? Do I need to make a list of the old url’s (for the redirect) before swapping the website ?

  Where is the old one right now? I wasn’t able to spot it on this account. I’d recommend keeping the old site accessible til the new one is perfect, at least. After that is there anything you’d need from it?