Hello

Hoping for some advice. My business currently has one main site - say 1abc1.com - but we have changed our name and now have a new domain, similar to the last - say 2abc2.com.

I currently have two identical sites running, but the new one I have not submitted to any search engines, or changed (incoming) links to. The old site does well (100+ unique users a day, which is good for our niche), and is ranked well (top spot on google for all our main products). New site gets about 20 users a day, mainly through seeing adverts / us / email footer links.

How should I go about transferring over to one site, without loosing rank etc by being duplicated, or having to organically start again....I know how long it took to get ranked on the old site...

Any thoughts appreciated - I am scared of messing it up!

Matt

Really depends what you want.

Something gives me the feeling that you'd prefer sales over rank.

The textbook way of doing it is a site-wide 301 redirect; although this should allow you to keep your rank, it often tanks your SERPs

I'm sure TheGypsey will have 'proper' advice about redirecting at the registrar level.

If your old site gets a decent amount of traffic yet you want the brand awareness of your new site then the crudest way is to do an iframe redirect. It's far from elegant but puts your new site infront of visitors who come into your old site in a way the SEs cannot easily detect.

To do the iframe redirect put a small iframe on each age of your old site (just above the closing body tag) that has the src attribute pointing to the equivalent page on your new site.

Each page in your new site should have the frame breaking script in the head section;

<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
if (window.self != window.top) window.top.location = window.self.location;
//-->
</script>

matt_outandabout wrote:

Hello

Hoping for some advice. My business currently has one main site - say 1abc1.com - but we have changed our name and now have a new domain, similar to the last - say 2abc2.com.

I currently have two identical sites running, but the new one I have not submitted to any search engines, or changed (incoming) links to. The old site does well (100+ unique users a day, which is good for our niche), and is ranked well (top spot on google for all our main products). New site gets about 20 users a day, mainly through seeing adverts / us / email footer links.

How should I go about transferring over to one site, without loosing rank etc by being duplicated, or having to organically start again....I know how long it took to get ranked on the old site...

Any thoughts appreciated - I am scared of messing it up!

Matt

Can U clear it up some???

Are U looking to move EVERYTHING from the Old site to the New one? If the Old site is ranking, is an aged domain and fully indexed, WHY would you want to move to a weaker domain???

I am unsure as to why the move??

TheGypsy wrote:

Can U clear it up some???

Are U looking to move EVERYTHING from the Old site to the New one? If the Old site is ranking, is an aged domain and fully indexed, WHY would you want to move to a weaker domain???

I am unsure as to why the move??

Mainly because of branding - our old site was x-supplies, it is now x-solutions - because we have started doing consultancy as well as selling.  It felt important to transfer all our company stuff over - and we had a legal change from an LLP to Ltd (UK company law) and could not get our old LLP name as a Ltd company.

So an enforced move as well as reasons beyond the internet...and yes, sales and 'presence' is more important than ranking.

But I am up enough to know that two sites with identical content is not good - for SEO or to make customers understand our services.

Matt

Well, ultimately then, you'll want to set everything up on the new domain and 301 redirect, on a page by page basis, all of the old site pages to their coresponding new ones.

I certainly wouldn't want to LEAVE the other site up as it will be directly competing with the new one... with the exact same content - which could have it's own problems.

Getting the love passed can take some time, and rankings/traffic is likely to slip for a period ( 2-4 weeks ?).. but that comes with the territory with such instances.

How old is the OLD Domain?
How old is the NEW one?

Why can't you just have forwarding set up on   your old domain name?  If all the content is being moved to the new domain name and you still have people out there that would be use to the old domain,  Have your registrar forward that domain to the current one.  If you don't want the new domain visible in the status bar then have it masked.

ninak wrote:

Why can't you just have forwarding set up on   your old domain name?  If all the content is being moved to the new domain name and you still have people out there that would be use to the old domain,  Have your registrar forward that domain to the current one.  If you don't want the new domain visible in the status bar then have it masked.

Because, if there are links to any of the interior pages, simply redirecting at the registrar level would lose al that link love. So, using 301s on a page by page basis is a better move generally speaking ( I haven't really looked into the link profile of the old site)

Maybe in 6 months, once the SEs have fully sorted out where the juice should be flowing, then make the change at the registrar level....

Thanks.  I wasn't sure about that.

Cheers guys

*heads off on 301 redirect mission for 80odd pages....*

Let you know how it goes

Matt

Or just redevelop the old site with new content - unless the domain name is REALLY, REALLY inaccurate. As Gyp has hinted, domain age is important - I have one registered in 1998 that the SE seems to love....hence my thought that a redevelopment would eb the better way to go.

OK, so maybe having two sites of *different* content is acceptable

hmmmm

thanks all