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Migrating domains - What is the best practise?

Hi, I have one domain which is an Australian domain – http://fastthinking.com.au and I need to migrate this to a generic .com domain ( probably http://howinnovationworks.com ) How can I achieve this without losing pagerank on the .com.au domain? Bearing in mind that the .com is a new one. Following the advise on this site it would seem that you should only serve content from one domain otherwise i would just run it from both


Any tips?

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2 answers

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michaelcyger [ Admin ]

The short answer is: you’re going to lose PageRank initially, but it will catch back up eventually.


In the long run, you’ll be better off with a .com domain for many reasons that you’re probably already aware of.

Here’s what I’d do if I were you to make the switch from the old domain to the new domain:

1. Review the “Telling Google about your domain change” page on their Webmasters page: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=83106 But don’t do it yet! :)

2. Get both domains working on the hosting environment that you’re currently using. In other words, if you visit either of the domains, it should display the exact same information for each URL — except for the main domain.

3. As soon as you get the new domain going — or maybe even before then — I’d programmatically control who has access to the new URL. Set it up so that only someone accessing from a certain IP address (YOUR PERSONAL COMPUTER) can access the domain. Otherwise, it redirects to your old domain. In this way, if Googlebot for whatever reason visits your site through the new domain it won’t see duplicate content; it will be redirected to the content it already knows. (Let me know if you need an idea on how to do this.)

4. Figure out how to set up a 301 redirect (site moved to new domain) from your old domain to your new domain with something like this:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.)?old-domain.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.new-domain.com/\$1 [R=301,L]
5. Once you have everything setup the way you want, flip the switch. Redirect from your old domain to your new domain for all visitors (not just your IP address) using the 301 redirect.

6. Tell Google you’ve changed domains using their Webmaster tool: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=83106


Your new domain will obviously start out with a PageRank of 0 (zero). But as Google sees — through your notification and 301 redirect — that you’re consistently transferring all your traffic via a proper 301 redirect, they will eventually (days to months) transfer your PageRank to the new domain. Anyone who has old URLs bookmarked will be redirected.

Leave the 301 redirect in place indefinitely.

Hope this helps.

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spacecowboy
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+1 some good tips here, I hadn’t thought of actually telling The Goo that i was migrating :)

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  • 1

jeffreynichols

You should 301 the .au domain at the registrar level to the .com domain. If you use the same file structure on the .com site then you’ll be fine. Make sure deep links to your .au domain still point to the same content on the .com domain. Unfortunately, even in this scenario you can expect to lose 1/10 of your PR through the 301 redirect. There’s no way around this.

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