Often companies ask us can changing web hosting to a new host damage their search engine optimisation. In the video below Matt Cutts of Google’s search engine team talks through the basics of what happens when you change web host.
If, in the process of moving web hosting, you also intend to migrate your site to a new content management system (for example you intend to migrate to WordPress which we do quite a lot for customers), then you must always make sure you do 301 redirects for the old site links. This tells the search engines where they need to find the pages on the new site and also lets them know that they should update their index with the new URLs.
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Simon has written 51 posts on Oxford Digital Marketing.
Simon Wallace-Jones started his Digital Marketing work in the late 80's implementing solutions for companies like DEC, Sun and Tektronix. In 1996 he co-founded the pioneering company Relayware.com which developed one of the world's first web marketing automation solutions which is still in use today by leading brands like Sony, Lexmark and Lenovo. In 2008 he co-founded Oxford Digital Marketing to help smaller businesses take their use of Digital Marketing to a higher level.
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Thanks to you Simon, we caught the 301 redirect issue on my recent hosting move in time. Many thanks for taking the time and trouble to alert me to the problem.
My complete pleasure. Making sure you put 301 redirects on your old page addresses in Google when you migrate a site to a new platform is so important. They tell the search engines to update their indexes with the new location of the pages, but more importantly they redirect your customers and prospects to the new site when they click on the olds links in search engine results. You need to have this happen whilst you are waiting for the search engines to update their indexes with you new URL’s.