301 Expert Needed

[SteveC]

I have a website that has excellent rankings and traffic from all the major search engines. The problem is the site is old and stale, and the domain name stinks.

I have already built the new website, and already decided on the new domain name. I need somebody with references I can check out, preferably who has done this before, to manage the process of changing from one site to the other, and one domain name to the other.

Please sticky mail me with the subject "301 change" if you are interested.

[David Wallace]

Setting up 301 permanent redirects is not that difficult. Most likely you can find enough information here or at other forums to do it yourself. It just depends on what kind of hosting environment you have. Is it Windows or Unix/Linux?

[AussieWebmaster]

I agree if you have already built the site yourself you have enough skills to do the 301 redirect.

http://www.tamingthebeast.net/articles3/spiders-301-redirect.htm

that should tell you what to do...

http://www.internetbasedmoms.com/seo/301-redirect-windows-server.html

This one could be better

[Robert_Charlton]

I have a website that has excellent rankings and traffic from all the major search engines....

If you change the domain name now, in my experience you'd run the risk of losing your rankings and traffic on Google for an indefinite period of time.

Frankly, I'd wait until this so-called "sandbox" effect clears up. It seems to affect new domains and redirected sites. I believe that it has affected sites since roughly March of this year.

Try this search in Google to check for threads on the SEW Forums...

google sandbox site:forums.searchenginewatch.com

[Marcia]

I fully agree with Robert. Leave well enough alone unless you're willing to start from scratch and are prepared to play what could be a long waiting game.

[DaveN]

SteveC if the site is clean drop theothertim and Googleguy a PM explain what you are doing to ensure that the 301 works ok...

If dirty leave it alone... till Jan or Feb next year then just 301 on the root..but leave it till next year for google ;)

DaveN

[SteveC]

So I guess what everybody is saying is that it isn't a good move to make the change even though our old domain name isn't a good one?....unless I can somehow get Googleguy or theothertim to personally handle the change internally?

The site is clean, and it's been around since late 1999. I'll PM them and see what I can do...thanks for the tips.

[AussieWebmaster]

If you do it right there should be no loss... a 301 redirects until such time as everything is fully transferred Google is going to still have your first site listed in the SERPs... it does not reverse engineer and take them out, it rediects and makers the relevant changes in its database as far as I have known.

AWR any comments on this one?

[Robert_Charlton]

If you do it right there should be no loss... a 301 redirects until such time as everything is fully transferred Google is going to still have your first site listed in the SERPs... it does not reverse engineer and take them out, it rediects and makers the relevant changes in its database as far as I have known.

AWR any comments on this one?

There should be no loss, but there currently is on Google. Like, from #1 to oblivion. 301s work fine... Google was the first to show all the new urls... but the site doesn't rank. Clean as a whistle... industry leader... completely legit everything. Old backlinks in the process of changing over to new ones. It doesn't seem to matter.

Same site is fully indexed and ranking where expected on MSN-Beta, so I know the 301s are working.

On Yahoo, the site is also ranking up top. The home page shows the new domain, but the inner pages still show the old one. It's been five months.

What does "AWR" stand for?

[Marcia]

The bottom line is that whether the sandboxing phenomenon is "real" or not, a spanking new domain will end up being sandboxed, regardless of whether not a 301 will work, and is liable to end up in the toilet where rankings are concerned.

[AussieWebmaster]

AWR = Ad Words Rep

I have transferred to new servers and also redesigned a couple of sites and changed page names and had no problems with using 301 redirects to keep my SERP listings... so I suppose I was just lucky????
I have to admit I have not done this for a new domain transferring from an old domain.

[Robert_Charlton]

I have to admit I have not done this for a new domain transferring from an old domain.

New domains do in fact seem to be the common issue with the so-called "sandbox" issues I've seen. New pages on my old domains are doing just fine... and I see the effects of new links to them kicking in fairly quickly.

Simply moving to another server without changing domain names involves IP and DNS changes only, not 301 redirects, and doesn't have anything to do with the domain name.

[SteveC]

Just to be clear on what my original question was:

I have Site A on Domain A. Domain A is a bad domain name (easy to misspell & has ties to a different company). Site A is also old and stagnent. I want to release Site B (fresh version of site A) on Domain name B. Is there a way to do this without losing valuable rankings? It seems like what I am hearing here is the answer is no.

[AussieWebmaster]

Leave domain A where it is... set up the other one and then start doing redirects to various pages to it.

[Robert_Charlton]

Just to be clear on what my original question was:

I have Site A on Domain A. Domain A is a bad domain name (easy to misspell & has ties to a different company). Site A is also old and stagnent. I want to release Site B (fresh version of site A) on Domain name B. Is there a way to do this without losing valuable rankings? It seems like what I am hearing here is the answer is no.

That's definitely the question I've been answering.... Don't do it now.

Leave domain A where it is... set up the other one and then start doing redirects to various pages to it.

Doesn't make sense to me at all... sounds like the worst of both worlds. AussieWebmaster... would you clarify how this will work, and have you done it?

[AussieWebmaster]

I have redirected an old site to a new one but the last time was well over 12 months and things have changed a little since then. But I would still look at how I was going to redesign the new site with consideration of the pages that exist on the old site. I would start with redirecting some of the inner pages that have similar content and at the same time would develop links to them as well as the new home page.
If there was no PR transfer and listing of these pages for the keywords I would leave the main pages of the old site where they are until the new site gets listed.
Obviously Yahoo directory and other submissions need to be done. Anchor links from the old site could help.