301 Redirection Confusion: PLEASE Help

[pracho]

I'd a site which had a PR of 3 for home page and few pages crawled. For some reasons, I needed to change the domain name. I created the new site with same content but different domain name.

I did the 301 only for the home page of the previous site to the new site. Now, the new site is being crawled (home page and few other pages). At the same time, although the rannkings for the old site are dropped (i.e. if I type by its name it is shown but not on the first place like earlier), it is still being crawled. Also, since I've done the redirection only for the home page, few pages from the old site and new site have same content and both are being crawled presently.

I've now 2 options:
a.) To do the 301 for all pages of the previous site
b.) Leave the idea of 301 as I didn't have much to carry from the old site (it had only few backward links) and instead just do the domain forwarding.

Please advice what should I do. I've just started working on the SEO for the new site and it would be breakdown for me if I see myself getting penalized for something like.

Many thanks in advance.

[cyanide]

YOu should 301 all your pages, otherwise you will be subjected to the duplicate content filter


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[pracho]

Thanks cyanid. I appreciate your prompt response.

So you recommend doing redirection?

If the new site strucutre is different, is it ok that I do redirection from all the pages to the home page of the new site only.

Will I need to do this by adding code to all the pages or is there a way to do it from one place only?

[cyanide]

It's best to do a page to page redirection, rather than 301 all pages to the home page. The 301 tells the search engines that the page has permanently moved. Obviously they all haven't moved to the home page. Doing this may hurt.

I know it's a bit of a pain to do this manually, but for the sake of minimizing a drop in search engine rank, then it's more than worth it.



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[pracho]

Thanks cyanide. It seems there is lot of complexity in redirection (the old site had lot of query/? based pages) and since it didn't have much SEO value, I've decided to undo the redirection.

Now, what should I do to the old site? Can I just put off the hosting of the old site and only do the domain forwarding? Please advice. I need to take the action by tomorrow, else I may face content duplication penalty.

[cyanide]

Okay, what I would do then, is

create a 301 re-direct for your old home page to the new. Doing so means that all other pages may encounter 404 error page messages.

To combat this, you can create a custom 404 error page for both domains, where the contents of this page contain links to the new domain


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[pracho]

cyanide: The other pages of old site are working fine with the content shown and crawled on Google. They are not showing 404 as they still exist.

Is there a way I can do the 301 for those dynamic pages?

[Manpasand]

For internal pages, try to keep older file name in new domain too then you dont need for custom 404 error pages.

301 Redirect for Linux:
http://articles.online-web-solutions.com/2005/june/article-3-301-redirect-setup.html
301 Redirect for Windows:
http://articles.online-web-solutions.com/2005/june/article-4-301-redirect-windows-server.html

I hope it will help you. Good Luck!!!