Redirecting Old Domain Name to a New Domain Using 301 Permanent Redirect

[HostNurse]

If you are looking to re-brand your business with a new domain name while preserving your current domain/website ranking and traffic, then you will need to use 301 permanent redirect.

The following are the steps that you need to do to redirect your a domain name to a new one:

1. Transfer your website to the new domain and re-brand it to the the new one.

2. Redirect your current domain name to the new domain name using 301 permanent redirect. You can do this by adding the following code to your .htaccess file on the root of your old domain:

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^olddomain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://newdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

3. Use the change of address tool at Google Webmaster to notify them about the new change.

Allow sometime for Google and other search engines to transfer the link juice and ranking of the old domain to the new one.

It is recommended to keep the old domain name redirected for 1 year.

 

[elcidofaguy]

You can also implement domain redirects within your webhosting cpanel account, its much easier to do especially if you are uncomfortable with amending files on your web server.

That aside if you are attempting to recover a penalized site through a redirect then I would recommend redirecting your most valuable pages using htaccess and/or use the canonicalization tag wrt duplicate content from old to new domain. There is also a theory currently being banded about that a double redirect can overcome penalized sites i.e. 301 domain -> 301 temp domain -> New domain - I've heard mixed reviews on that so cannot say for sure if it works ;-)

 

[HostNurse]

You are right about the penalization part, redirecting a penalized domain to new domain will transfer the penalization, so it would be wise in that case to redirect the valuable pages.

The theory of double redirect, I believe it is not true at all. actually a double redirect even in the case of normal website with no penalization would trigger search engines bots and could lead to the new domain to be penalized or even banned in some cases that I have seen.

 

[elcidofaguy]

elcidofaguy

Nice one! I've never heard of non penalized sites getting hit with a double redirect, so will look into that.... I'm inclined to believe that double redirect is not as effective as some people make out as I am sure G's crawlers can easily figure that out, despite various statements online to the contrary as well as ones from folks whom have not seen any improvement...

Hence I think the best way is to choose your best pages with page redirect and canonization as you might have a chance... that is of course you are using redirects to recover from a penalty.... and of course use of disavow tool if you are attempting to fix your site without redirecting...