: Google SEO - Migrating website from a sub-directory of another website to its own domain name At the present moment I have a website hosted on example.com/myWebsite, where example.com hosts in

@Holmes151

Ideally, there woud be 301 redirects from example.com/myWebsite/ URLs to example.net pages after you have upgraded. Ask your host about this.

If the 301s are not possible, the next best way is to use meta-refresh redirects without delays (while keeping the old pages there for this purpose).

For example, on the head section of example.com/myWebsite/dirA, there should be

<meta http-equiv=refresh content="0; url=http://example.net/dirA" />


Google recognizes these as 301 redirects, so the ranking benefits are transferred to the example.net pages.

It's important that you do these from page to page, in an unique manner - not redirecting every page to example.net root.

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@Heady270

When you move content from a sub-directory to its own domain, you typically lose Google rankings for up to a year until Google starts to trust the domain.

Google has launched features in Webmaster Tools to help change the domain name of an entire site, but they don't support moving a portion of a site.

UPDATE:

Since this answer was originally written the Google change of address tool now supports subdomain moves:


Use the Change of address tool when your site move entails a domain or subdomain change, such as changing from fish.example-petstore.com to example.com or example-petstore.com.

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