This is a quick and easy method of moving your blog to a new domain with minimal SEO impact with no downtime.
In the case i’m describing, I will be setting up a new install of WordPress and importing the old posts in.
Installation
Install WordPress on your new site as per the instructions available on wordpress.org or your hosting provider.
Login to your old site and export all the posts by logging into your WordPress admin panel under tools and export. Select the option ‘All Content’
Now, login to your new WordPress admin panel and select tools and import. Click on ‘WordPress’ and follow the instructions to install the import plugin. Once completed, you can select the file that was generated when you exported your posts earlier. This will pull in all your posts/comments/attachments etc. You will be prompted to select who to assign as the authors of the posts. If they do not exist, you can create a new user for them, or just assign them to yourself.
Redirecting Old Site
Now that you have all your content on your new site, you will want to redirect the traffic from the old site to the one. To accomplish this, you will use the apache mod_rewrite directive. You may want to confirm with your hosting providers this is supported, but more than likely it probably is.
Create a file where you have your old installation of Wordpress called ‘.htaccess’ or modify it if it already exists. Place the following inside:
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
Replace ‘newdomain.com’ with the domain of your new site. This will redirect all traffic and links to your old articles to the new domain.
If you are getting 404 errors on the new site it may be because you may have had custom permalinks or other SEO addons that changed the URL structure, if you did you can install the same plugins to match the old structure.
SEO Considerations
Some things you may want to consider for SEO is how your permalinks structures are setup in your admin panel under General –> Permalinks. I would probably keep the same structure you previously had if you had been getting a lot of traffic already. If the site is new and not a busy site, then you can just select whichever structure you like best. I ended up going with:
/%postname%/
I picked this mainly because of what Matt Cutts said in this Video below. If it’s good enough for him…..
Google Webmaster Tools
If you are using Google’s Webmaster Tools already, you can verify your new site and tell Google you have moved the site to your new domain.
Finally, some plugins I recommend for WordPress:
Jetpack
Google Analyticator
Google XML Sitemaps
I would try to use as little plugins as possible to keep your site nice and speedy.
