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fox_statton

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Moving a site... Google

HI all,
I am moving a site from domain.com to newdomain.com

Planning on using 301 redirects to ensure that google sees the new site, is there anything else I should do to try and ensure I dont loose a good pageranking and search results placement?

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Matthew Nguyen
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Matt outlines a great process above.  I agree that a 301 redirect is going to be your best bet.  Remember, you are going to lose about 10% of your traffic for a 13 week period of time.  

You could also try using a rel canonical tag on your pages on the old site and direct them to the new site.  There are some examples where that has worked.  

BUT, a good ol 301 is still the way to go, and ultimately and SEO best practice.

foxstatton - It sounds like you are set on moving your <domain> to <newdomain>.

However, if you can avoid having to move it, I would suggest not moving it.
Moving a domain is complex and will cause you to lose site traffic in the short term.

Your safest bet to not lose website traffic is to not move your <domain> or any of your content URLs at all.

Many times people buy domain names thinking that a new domain will garner more traffic.  However, if you've built up a website on a <domain> over time, chances are that there are many links (backlinks) from other websites to your domain and that you've built up your <domain> brand-name over that time period.

Bottom line - if you follow mattnguyen's list of things to do, you will be OK with Google, and you will likely be able to regain your previous search engine traffic levels with the 301 redirect strategy.

However, if you were my friend/family and I was giving advice to you, I would strongly urge you not to move to <newdomain> at all and working on enhancing your existing website on your existing <domain> and avoid the time/effort of the move to a <newdomain>.
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Use a link tag with rel=canonical on your old site if you dont want your rankings to drop when moving your website.

<link rel="canonical" href="http://mynewsite.com/moving-to-this-page.html" />

Case Study: http://visiblefactors.com/blog/1234-canonical-tag-or-301-redirect-serps/
Yup, proves that what I was also suggesting can really work well.   I will use that case study in the future, for sure!

I guess great minds think alike, eh gwkg?  ;)
Yes!  =)
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fox_statton

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Thanks guys, some great advice here.

I wish I could avoid moving, but unfortunately its a requirement.
Ouuuch, the original suggester of the Rel=Canonical doesn't get any points?  :(  Sniff, sniff.  

;)

Glad you got what you needed, fox_statton.