Hey, I've been lurking for a while, but this is my first time posting, so I appreciate your help.

I run a forum that's finally taken hold in search engines, but now I need to move my forum to another directory on the server, and I don't want to lose all the search engine links.

I'm moving it from http://www.domain.com/forums/
to the root directory at http://www.domain.com

But I don't want the search engine to keep trying to link to http://www.domain.com/forums/thread1234.html and lose all that traffic.

Is there anything that can be done, or that needs to be done, to ensure I don't take any search engine penalties during this transition?

Thanks.

use a 301 redirect
http://www.highrankings.com/forum/in...showtopic=5644

Hey, sorry to bump this thread again, but I'm still working on it.

I think I've pretty much decided I want to setup my home page at:

http://www.mysite.com

to redirect to:

http://www.mysite.com/forums/

So when someone visits the main page, they're looking at the forums, eliminating the useless fluff of the homepage.

My question now is what is the best way for me to do this, while maintaining my PR and backlinks? My homepage is 1PR above my forums currently. I've heard horror stories about using a 302 redirect, and I'm afraid this would be an improper use of a 301...

I do have an example though, which seems to be similar to what I want to do. If you go to http://blogger.com (PR10 site), there's a 301 redirect to www.blogger.com. I already have a 301 from domain.com to www.domain.com on my site. However when you request www.blogger.com, it uses a 302 redirect to bounce you to http://www.blogger.com/start. Could this be the correct way, since it seems very similar to what I'm looking to do?

Our site, being community based, relies on getting new members almost entirely from SE results, so it's critical I don't lose our ranking.

Thanks!

I think the 301 redirect is the way you want to go. The 302 is a temporary redirect and the 301 is the permanent redirect. You shouldn't lose anything with search engines for the 301.

As said above, 301 reguardless of where you redirect.

Then why does Blogger use 302? =/

komodo I can't answer why blogger uses the 302. What I can say is that blogger is owned by google and also has a lot of links pointing to it. They probably have enough that regardless of what kind of redirect they use they'll have the PR10.

Also keep in mind that PR is not what gets you found in a search engine. It may seem like that sometimes, but high PR is generally an effect of good seo and not the cause of anything.

301 redirects are they best way to ensure search engines know that any link building you've done should now be passed to the redirected page.

If you do a search for '301 and 302 redirects' you'll find plenty of sites saying the same and advising the use of the 301.

Originally Posted by komodo

Then why does Blogger use 302? =/

same answer as you got from HR

Blogger aren't bothered about SEs