: How do I temporarily disable a website? I have to take a website down for a month, which is the least intrusive way to keep achieved SEO optimizations? should I just add in apache config:

@BetL925

If your website is down for a month, you will lose all your rankings and it may take you months to gain them back. I had a website go offline for about 3 months due to an issue with hosting. When I got it back online, it took nearly a full year to get back the rankings that it had once enjoyed.

The best idea I have to mitigate the damage would be to use the correct error status: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable In conjunction with a Retry-After header to let bots know when it is coming back. See this article.

I would also use the error page to explain to users why the site is down, and when it is coming back.

Here is an example of how to implement these headers in your Apache config file using mod_rewrite:

ErrorDocument 503 /503.html
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/503.html$
Header always set Retry-After "Fri, 31 May 2014 12:00:00 GMT"
RewriteRule .* - [R=503]


You can check that it is working using the command line tool curl:

curl --head mysite.example.com/

Which should look something like this:

HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable
Date: Thu, 01 May 2014 10:07:06 GMT
Server: Apache
Content-Length: 7590
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Retry-After: Fri, 31 May 2014 12:00:00 GMT

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@Murray432

Use a 302 redirect instead 301

302 Redirect Means:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_302 - "The HTTP/1.0 specification (RFC 1945) defines this code, and gives it the description phrase "Moved Temporarily"."

However that doesn't mean you'll be able to keep your search engine placement. It just specifies that the content is moving for a set amount of time but will return to its previous location in the future. A 301 redirect means the content has moved permanently.

To keep your search engine placement, mirror your existing website to the new location so the search engines can still reference it while the real version of the site remains offline and you make the changes. Removing your site from the web for a month will likely result in a long term loss of ranking.

You could use a "503 - the server is temporarily unavailable" but a full month seems a bit long for that code. 503 is typically used when webmasters apply patches and upgrades.

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