Closing Old Site/URL and Opening New site with same pages

[frank3]

Unfortunately, ownership issues dictate that a 10 year old, well ranked (especially on Google) US Insurance site be shuttered and content deleted. I have secured a new name/url and want the post the same content in the new site. What steps should I take to protect the new site form being considered duplicate content and penalized accordingly? Thank you for your help!

[JohnW]

This is a complex problem without more info. Who will own the current domain after it is closed down, will it be allowed to expire, can it be redirected, what is going to happen with the registration etc. And who owns the content, who else might be planning to resuse it?

[HumanWebMarketing]

Exactly, all JohnW mentioned can change the situation radically. Basically, the easiest case is if you can still 301 your old site to your new site and you have the rights for the old content. In all other cases, it might be cheaper and easier to just start anew, from scratch, however frustrating it looks at this point.

[frank3]

Thank you for the feedback. I do retain the legal rights to all the existing content and the site url. By agreement the site cannot function as an active insurance shopping location. However I can post a simple page with the old name linking to a new site and can post a redirect. Sorry to have omitted this information.

[g1smd]

You need a site-wide 301 redirect from the old site to the new site, one which preserves all folder and filename information within the redirect.

It will take Google a few weeks to index the new site, and many months to drop all references to the old one.

Make sure that all internal links link only to URLs on the new domain.

Anyone accessing any pages at the old URLs will see the URL change to the new one in the top of their browser; meaning that there is "no old site" any more.

So, anyone accessing any old-site URLs will still arrive on your new site as traffic, but there will be no website functioning and selling AT the old URL.

[JohnW]

What he said. Plus, try to get people who link to the old site to change their links to point to the new site.

[frank3]

Thank you so much for the feedback. I appreciate the advice. Some of the links I can have changed. However, a number of the links just exist and no longer seem to be managed.

[g1smd]

Don't worry that you cannot update all of your incoming links.

The reidirect ensures that the vistor does indeed reach your new site anyway.