Site Redirect
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I am looking at the $13/yr site redirects, and I have questions. I moved my blog from the free .wordpress.com blog to a self-hosted site. However, my old free .wordpress.com blog pages are still being ranked on Google/Bing/Yandex.
A wordpress rep suggested that I delete the old .wordpress.com blog, but I’m concerned that will cause 404 page not found errors.
The new website is a https:// site, but WordPress will only forward to a http:// site. I am wondering if this is sufficient to get the new site listed in the indexes, or whether I am barking up the wrong tree.
Can anyone provide me some simple 1) 2) 3) steps on how to keep the google search engine rankings and move the site to the new https:// site?
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi there,
It looks like you were given some inaccurate information in that chat. Sorry about that.
– Did you export your WordPress.com site and import that content to the new self-hosted site?
– Are you still using the same permalink structure on the self-hosted site as your site used here?
– Are you still using the same domain as you had connected here?If your answers to those questions are all yes, then you don’t need to worry about redirects, as all your content will still be at the same URLs as before. They’re just on a different server.
If you also want to make sure traffic from to your free WordPress.com address is redirected, we offer a Site Redirect upgrade that does that, but if your site has been on a custom domain for a while that’s not really necessary.
I would recommend setting your WordPress.com site to private, so search engines don’t try to index it as well as the self-hosted site.
If you are not using the same permalink structure on the self-hosted site, you’ll need to set up redirects on that side. If I’m not mistaken, that’s done by adding rules to the htaccess file. The folk in the self-hosted forums will be better able to advise you on exactly what to do there:
https://wordpress.org/support/
As for http vs https you have two options. I would recommend you find out what your hosting provider’s requirements are for adding an SSL certificate to your site on that end. Once you enable SSL at the new host your site will again load over https and search engines won’t even notice there’s any difference.
Otherwise, you’ll need to wait for search engines to re-index your site at the http link. This typically takes a few weeks, and you might notice a drop in search engine traffic until this process completes, but then it should return to normal. I wouldn’t set up a redirect form https to http.
You should be aware that search engines are increasingly favouring sites that are being served over https, so setting up SSL at your new host is really the better option of the two just from a SEO perspective, never mind the security benefits to your and your site’s visitors.
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