Hello, I made the classic beginners mistake to start a site at a free host and use its sub domain. With time, traffic has increased, number of links and PR also. At this time, I would like to have my own domain, but what about all SEO aspects? Could a redirect 301 do the job in keeping the benefit of SERP and PR? What are the expert suggesting? Thanks,
I've done such "movement" once (also from free hosting to a domain) and I have done 301 redirect using .htaccess, so if some has accessed www.smth.olddomain.com/something.html, it was automatically redirected to www.newdomain.com/something.html. There weren't any problems and the trafffic from Google is as usual.
Many free hosts limit ones ability to use htaccess. If they permit php Webpages, you could do 301 permanent redirects with that as well.