How do I move a domain without losing PR?

[donquixote]

Hi,

My website is a http:// www . sitename . biz now I recently acquired the My website is a http:// www . sitename . com I currently have pretty good rankings on google for my number 1 keyword. I am on page 1 with my number 1 keyword though I rank #8 on the page.

I have many questions.

1. Should I keep my .biz domain alive and just park the .com?
2. Should I re-direct my .biz domain to my new .com domain?
3. If I should re-direct my .biz domain to my new .com domain, how do I do that?
4. If I should re-direct my .biz domain to my new .com domain, should I go back to all the back links I created and change them all to the .com? Or is my time better spent leaving them alone and focusing on new links?

thank you everyone for your help

Donny

[bobitza]

1. No
2. Yes
3. Make a 301 permanent redirect in the .htaccess (search Google or forum)
4. The "old" links will point to the .biz which will redirect to the .com (nothing is lost). The "new" links should be on the .com

[givex]

I completely agree with what bobitza has posted.

However, once you do the redirect you will lose your rankings for a while (anything up to a couple of months) before the . com has the same rankings as the . biz

[bobitza]

Err ... you don't loose anything. At least that's my understanding of a 301.

[shniager]

Bobitza is right make a 301 redirection from the old domain to the new one.

[iambored]

I think If you Redirects your old domain , No problem when You redirects you domain to a new except PR But one thing is much beneficial is that you can resubmit you website in same directories, Bookmarking sites in this way you can get double traffic, one from your Old domain which redirects to new domain and another by doing Resubmission...

[loosapphire]

Re-direct my .biz domain to your new .com domain does make sense. A 301 redirect is the best way to go. Recently I just did it to one of my website. The 301 directive is quite powerful. You can redirect not just single files but entire sites, for example when changing domain names e.g.

redirect 301 / http : // www. you. com/

Hope it helps.

[PaulSymonds]

I moved a site between domains recently and I'd read up a lot on things and permanent 301s are indeed the way to go.
Be warned though that it can take a few weeks for the Pagerank to transfer.
Also I'd recommend to get any links you can changed to direct to new domain from 3rd party sites, where you can do so.

[djmdjmdjm]

I'm about to do the same. Right now we have old.com and new.com. old.com is the master domain, but if you enter new.com, it goes to the same site, but we have never published new.com anywhere.

My plan is this:

1) make new.com a new, separate site (not just loading old.com)

2) make necessary changes to my site (lots of embedded emails with old domain, etc.)

3) recreate Google and Yahoo sitemap files

4) register new.com with Google webmaster tools, and create a separate Google analytics site references (thats what we use for analytics)

5) set up site-wide 301 redirect on old.com (all my paths will be the same)

6) change all my Adwords accounts to the new domain

hope/pray/cross fingers!

I have not been able to determine if individual 301s is any better than a site-wide 301, but I cannot figure out why site-wide wouldnt be fine...

[edhan]

Well, 301 redirect is the way to go.

Though you might lose your PR for a short period, then everything will be back to normal. This is the best solution as I had done that for some sites.