This is a pretty simple question, but I want to make sure I do it right. I wrote some technical blog posts on my personal blog a while back that get decent traffic. I've since started a separate site that I'm working on building up to monetize and I'd like to keep my personal blog strictly personal (opinion and news for the family and friends back home). Technically, I know how to make the 301 redirects for the necessary blog posts (there's only 3-4 that I'll be moving). But I have 2 doubts about this and don't won't to effect my search engine ranking on the new site. Should I copy-paste the blog posts from the old blog to the new one and make the 301 redirect? Is that the normal way it's done? Also, should I keep the posts on my old blog for a time or is it safe to remove them after the redirect is functioning?
My new site is wordpress hosted on a VPS. My personal blog from which the posts come is octopress hosted on heroku. I know technically how to implement the redirect (Google FTW). My question was more conceptual on how best to go about the move. Thank you for the offer to help. I'm still learning, so any advice you can give me will probably be useful.
Copy the content from the old website, to the new website. 301 the old website links to the new website links. Delete the old website posts so they no longer exist. Check that all of the 301 redirects are working. Your done
Thanks Alex for the response. I'd only make one small change to what you said to do. Check that the redirects are working before deleting the old posts. Other than that, it sounds good. Thanks for the second opinion.
True, you should have a backup of the content on your computer and another backup somewhere else really too
I think there is no need to Delete old posts when you redirect them. Once you redirect your post (url), Search Engines won't visit that page and simply go to the new link.