Google Rank and Domain redirection

Question

I have a blog on Blogspot (owned by Google). I would like to host it under my own domain. So I would consider 3 options:

1. Create a Domain redirect to Blogspot

2. Re-direct the existing blogspot URL to the new domain (don't know whether Blogspot allows this)

3. Simply link from Blogspot to my new Domain (e.g. "This is the new version of my blog")

Which one would be best for keeping my existing Google rank? In particular, I am curious about (1) - would Google assign to my new Domain the rank of my existing Blogspot URL if the former redirects to the latter?

Answer 1

Its a slightly longer process that the 3 options you've suggested, although still doable.

Blogspot won't allow 301 redirects, so you can't simply redirect the whole site + link juice.

You will need to tell Google that the duplicate content (i.e. your new site - assuming you have copied all content over already) is the most relevant. You do this using the rel=canonical tag. This will need to be done for every post/page that you have on your Blogspot blog.

Once you've implemented the rel=canonical tags on all your pages and posts, your new site will begin to rank in place of the old Blogspot one.

Here is a step-by-step walkthrough of how to implement this exact strategy http://www.seochat.com/c/a/search-engine-optimization-help/move-a-blogspot-blog-to-another-host-using-link-rel-canonical-tags/