SEO FAQ10

Will switching server hosts affect my search engine rankings?

I get no respect from my current Web host so I'm switching providers. Will this affect my search engine rankings?

No, it won't affect your rankings, but it wouldn't hurt to leave your site up on the old host for about a month to ensure that the DNS propagates across the Web and that the search spiders are indexing the pages at the new host. Once you see the spiders in your log files at the new host, it should be safe to take down the site at the old server.

How do I get my files indexed by the search engines after a redesign where file names have changed?

I've finally redesigned my circa-1997 Web site, and all the file names have changed. What should I do to ensure that the search engines index my new pages?

You should redirect all the old URLs to the new ones, via a 301-permanent redirect. If you're on an apache server, this can be done via the .htaccess file. There's more information in our 301-redirect forum.

You may also want to submit a sitemap to Google with the new URLs. Or, you could try Greg Boser's method of redirecting the old files to the new ones via a 301, and then actually submitting a sitemap to Google with the old URLs. This apparently causes Google to try to reindex them, and the 301 immediately tells them their new location.

Should I add robots follow Meta tag to my pages?

My chiropractor said that I should add a "robots follow" tag on all the pages of our site in order for it to be spidered deeply by the search engines. She also said that I should put the "revisit after" tag on as well, to let the bots know how often they should stop by. What do you think?

The default for all search engine spiders is to automatically follow the links that it finds on any given page, which makes any "robots follow" tag redundant. If you *don't* want the search engine spider to follow the links, you can try the "no follow" tag, but it may or may not be obeyed by all robots.

The "revisit after" tag is not necessary, nor is it helpful. The search engine spiders work on their own timetable, and couldn't care less what your revisit tag says. I've heard that the tag was actually created for one specific search engine a long time ago, but I've never bothered to confirm it. At any rate, there's no need to clutter up your code with it as today's engines ignore it.

How can we minimize traffic loss after a domain name change?

We are changing the name of our company and therefore must change our domain name to reflect our new brand. Our Website has been around for many years and has hundreds of links pointing to it. How can we minimize any loss of traffic or search engine rankings once we go live with the new domain?

Normally, this would not be a major problem with the search engines as you could simply park the new domain name at the same DNS and people could use either domain to get to your Website. However, there are some issues that you may want to try to avoid or minimize.

For instance, if you simply park your new domain, there's really no way to tell the search engines to start using that one instead of the old one. Most likely, the engines will simply keep indexing the old domain. That's not a problem in and of itself as people will still end up where you want them to be, but it can be a branding nightmare.

Eventually if you get more links pointing to the new domain than the old, your new one may start to be preferred by the engines, but this could take years, and it's not a given that it will actually work that way. You could also send emails to all your old linking partners requesting that they point their links to your new domain, but that could be a ton of work, and most likely only a certain percentage of them will bother to do it. Even trying to get a large directory such as Yahoo or DMOZ to change the URLs can be "iffy" at best.

Because of these minor headaches, I'd suggest that you set up a permanent 301-redirect at the server level from the old domain to the new. This is the preferred method of search engines, and it directly tells them (through the http headers) that the old domain has permanently moved to the new one. On Apache servers, these 301s can be easily set up through an .htaccess file. On Windows servers, it may be slightly more complicated, but your server/host should be able to help you do this correctly.

Be aware, however, that it most likely will take a good 2 or 3 months for the search engines to fully understand that all your files have moved. For a while you may find the old domain is still indexed, or some of both domains, or even neither of them. Don't panic when this happens. Just ride it out, and eventually all will be well. Google is especially good at understanding what to do with the 301s. Yahoo has traditionally been slower to come around, but may be doing a better job with it these days.