Many of us have moved our blogs to different domains or URLs in the past – in that process, we’ve taken some various steps in the hopes that Google will quickly pickup the blog at its new location and index it properly.

Rather than guessing on what the best practices are to move a blog – Google has released a guide at their webmaster blog outlining the best practices to follow when moving your site.

Your aim is to make the transition invisible and seamless to the user, and to make sure that Google knows that your new pages should get the same quality signals as the pages on your own site. When you’re moving your site, pesky 404 (File Not Found) errors can harm the user experience and negatively impact your site’s performance in Google search results.