Monday, May 24, 2010

Hosting 101 from Extima

The first questions to figure this all out are:
1) Have you purchased the domain name yet? If so, what site did you register it from? Would you mind sending the login information over?
2) Where is your old site hosted? If there is a control panel to manage that hosting account, would you mind sending the login information over?

We can set up a new hosting account for you for the new domain name ($10/month) and that will include your new email accounts. Then we can copy your current website over to the new one and get the changes made on that one. (Migration is free with the new hosting account. The cost of updates will depend on how much we need to update – if you can send a bulleted list of items you want changed I can get you a quote)

Then, once the new site is ready, we can create a Permanent Redirect on the old site to the new one. That will make most of the old Strength of your old website pass through to your new one. We can then forward all of your old email to your new email addresses and put an auto response on the old accounts to inform people of your new email address. I would leave that set up for about 1-2 months (to give search engines a chance to notice the redirect and people emailing you notice of the change and then we can just point your old domain name at the current one and make it an alias of the current one. By doing that, if somebody still has your old site bookmarked or still sends an email to an old email account, they will be directed to your new account.

The only additional suggestion I have to help keep your traction on Google searches is to submit the new site to search engines and directories and get it listed on other sites as soon as possible. We do offer an SEO plan that includes getting your site listed on Google and the other top search engines and directories, setting up your local listings, and creating your social media outlets. We can also then step in and manage those for you if want to grow your online presence. Let me know if you would like more information on that.