301 or 302

[J-Spider]

I have a situation where a client is rebranding and moving a website from websiteA.com to websiteB.com. This client also wants to continue to use the original websiteA.com name but for other purposes no longer related to websiteB.com.

So my question is what type of redirect is appropriate?

A 301 will say we are permanently moving the site to websiteB.com (which we are) but then once the new websiteA.com is ready to go live will search engines still think it is a redirect for a long time and not properly index the new websiteA.com?

Or do we use a 302 saying we are only temporarily moving the site so that once we put the new websiteA.com in place it can be indexed, theoretically, more rapidly.

Any helpful thoughts on this would be appreciated.

[stymiee]

You'll want to use a 301 redirect to indicate the current pages have permanently moved to the new URLs. Once you relaunch the new domain with new content just remove the 301 redirect so the content can be spidered appropriately. I recommend contacting other sites that link to the old domain to ask them to update their links as those links may become worthless once you relaunch the new domain as Google may see them as not relevant for the new content.

[J-Spider]

@stymiee > 301 is what I was thinking too.

But would it be better to just skip the redirects all together? We could instead just create a page that sits on WebsiteA.com that says "our new name is WebsiteB.com" and leave that until the new websiteA.com is ready for launch.

Anyone else have any thoughts about this? What would you suggest to your client?

[stymiee]

If you don't do a redirect you will be starting from scratch with the search engines as they will have no way to associate website A with website B.

[incrediblehelp]

Try the 301 redirect for a few months. Then kill the redirects once you see some value to to domainB. You could try and kill domainA (just add some dumb under construction page) for a few weeks so the search engines wont find any old content anymore. You get that start from scratch effect that you are looking.

I am just curious how or why they would want to do this? The history a domain earns is so very important now-a-days and should be taken advantage of.

Why not buy a domainC for this new purpose since they don't want or cant gain anything from domainA history?

[J-Spider]

Ideally, I'd like to do the 301. But, I don't know if it will matter. Whenever we turn off the 301 the link value will stop being passed and essentially it'll be a matter of starting over. So then the question really becomes do we want to start over now or later.

As to why we would do that... It's just what the client wants. I know it's less than ideal but sometimes you just have to pick up the pieces and try to make the best of situations outside of your control.

So, 301 for a few months and just hope the site's history gets passed in that time... then drop the 301 and put a new site at the original domain and hope for the best?

[incrediblehelp]

So, 301 for a few months and just hope the site's history gets passed in that time... then drop the 301 and put a new site at the original domain and hope for the best?

Sounds about right.