Want to redirect a domain to a new domain using 301 or 302?

Question

Firstly, I want to redirect an old domain to a new domain, (old site to new site).

The old site has good ranking on Google, now if I redirect the site, I want to retain this site on the Google rankings and want to develop the new site's SEO.

1. What would be the best redirect to use?
2. When a Googlebot re-crawls the old site after its been redirected, would the search results still show the keywords and source code on the original old site (as the page is still on the old server)?
3. the new sites will have near identical /products.html pages and contact us pages etc. Will these all be automatically forwarded?
4. What is ideally the best way to preserve the old site as well as redirect users that go on the old site straight to the new site, i was thinking of using some sort of CSS code which can blank out the page, or add a new layer or white to it, so the keywords remain?

Answer 1

Reading through your questions it seems to me that you think that you only need to do one redirect. That is the case if you are moving a carbon copy of the site. If you changed things around then it gets a little trickier.

What would be the best redirect to use?

301 redirect is best if you are moving your site permanently. Here is a great article about redirects and SEO.

If you are retaining the same structure on the news site then this is pretty easy. You would use something like this:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yournewdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]:

If you changing the structure around then some more complex 301's will be needed. In some cases, if the structure is very different then you would have to manually redirect each page. Usually if you have a small site this is not very time consuming but for very large website could be a huge headache.

When a google bot re-crawls the old site after its been redirected, would the search results still show the keywords and source code on the original old site (as the page is still on the old server)?

Your old site will still be indexed for a while and will show up in results. That is why setting up 301 redirect is important.

I would also setup a sitemap for both new and old site in Google Webmaster Tools right before you do your redirect and do a change of address. This will make things go a little faster and with both sitemaps in place you can check on the progress.

the new sites will have near identical /products.html pages and contact us pages etc. Will these all be automatically forwarded?

See the first questions.

4.What is ideally the best way to preserve the old site as well as redirect users that go on the old site straight to the new site, i was thinking of using some sort of CSS code which can blank out the page, or add a new layer or white to it, so the keywords remain?

If you have your redirects set up properly then you don't need to worry about this.

Answer 2

I generally advise against this. The reason is simple. There often is little to no value in actually changing domain names.

Having said that, there are times where a domain name change is required.

The simplest way to do this is to set-up a blanket 301 redirect from your old domain to your new domain name. In the case where a page is removed, and you want to redirect to another page, then on the new server, set up a 301 redirect from the old page to the new page. If the page is removed entirely, then just let it 404. It is cleaner and far easier to do your redirects this way.

Using a 301 redirect will preserve some of the link juice and value of the old domain. It is said that a small percentage is lost with any 301 redirect. Keep this in mind.

Now please understand this forgotten issue.

It seems to always come about that the old domain will need to go. Whether this is the case or not, please do the following anyway. You will be happy you did.

Using 301 redirects should always be seen as a temporary solution. In this case, you will want to do several things. Every domain name should be able to stand on it's own. This means that you will need to build TrustRank, SiteRank, and see how many of the old backlinks you can change to point to the new domain. You will need to build a new backlink profile for your new domain that matches or exceeds the backlink profile for your old domain. Your new domain will be at a disadvantage being new. For example, domain age is a TrustRank metric that has to be regained over time. However, most if not all other metrics can be regained. You will want to work on this along with the backlink profile so that you are not hamstrung by the old domain.

The old domain will continue to benefit your new domain only as long as the old domain remains and the 301 redirects remain. If this is broken, then the value is lost. Keep in mind that stuff happens and even temporary glitches can effect the new site rank very quickly which will take time to recover. This is where you will be happy that you worked on the backlink profile of the new site and the various trust metrics for your new site.

Once done, you will at least have some options not everyone enjoys. You can remove the old domain safely if you do your work well. Better yet, you should be able to make the new site perform better than the old site and therefor would be better off removing the old domain. This is a powerful option.