302 & 503 for temporary site down page: what to use for 'retry-after'?
- by Miak
If I want to temporary take down a website but the timeframe could be from 1 day to 1-2 weeks, I know that a 302 redirect (to a down.html page for instance) is best in order to preserve the existing SEO value of the site.
I've also read that one should return a 503 status code for these types of situations but they seems to require setting a 'retry-after' time period.
What If I don't know how long it will be down for? can I leave out this part of the header
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-handle-downtime-during-site-maintenance