I want to move my current Tumblr blog to static HTML blog. Currently I am using a custom domain, I am planning on doing the move when Google sees domain name change. I am considering two options: Buying a hosting service Using GitHub pages Buying a hosting service would probably mean I am going to pay for lots of things that I don't need like PHP, MySQL, e-mail service etc. On the other hand, if I use GitHub pages, I can't use .htaccess file to make 301 redirects. I want to change my URL structure and this is important to me. I was wondering if I use: <meta http-equiv=refresh content="0; url=http://example.com/newurl" /> Would Google see it as 301 redirect, so that I won't use my search engine value?