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Our company owns a selection of top level domain names. Each of these domain names points to the same IP.

We currently market our domain as existingfoo.com. All our incoming links are to that domain, our SSL certificate is JUST for that single domain, and so on. Our search results always point to that domain. (I'm not sure why or how that happens)

I've been asked to make any adjustments necessary so that our 'default' (if you like) domain becomes newbar.com. Obviously I will need to manage some of our business listings etc, I think I will need to change our Analytics code. I will need a new SSL certificate, and I know I'll need to change some of the code, and adjust keywords to be more relevant for the new domain. What else might I need to do (particularly on the IIS server on which the site is hosted, and to ensure search engines point to the right domain?)

EDIT: re 301s Some responses to this question have suggested using 301 redirects. I had previously ruled this out as the site is not moving. It will remain on the same server at the same IP. We want the url returned when searching for our company to be newbar.com, not existingfoo.com. But we DO still want the site to respond to traffic from both domains.

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    Also if you're on the same server and the same ip, the Permanent Redirect is used to tell the S.E. to move from existingfoo.com to newbar.com Besides, serve the SAME content with two different domain is a very bad SEO practice (duplicate content issue).
    – Aurelio De Rosa
    Commented Oct 31, 2011 at 12:00
  • @AurelioDeRosa Thanks for clearing that up, I know what I'll be doing now.
    – fearoffours
    Commented Oct 31, 2011 at 12:10
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    I'm interested about you opening a bounty. You've got the answer. 301 redirects are the way to go. As Aurelio says you don't want duplicate content on all domains and you also want search engines and all sorts to know that the "main" domain is newbar.com. I would have 2 hosting accounts. 1 has a htaccess which 301 redirects all traffic to the newbar.com domain. Point any domains != newbar.com to this hosting account. Main website in the other hosting account and point newbar.com to it. That's how to do it. Silly having many domains pointed to one hosting account and serving the same website!
    – Thomas Clayson
    Commented Oct 31, 2011 at 16:40
  • @ThomasClayson the bounty was offered when the only answer was the one mentioning DNAME records. I've addressed your other points in a new question: webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/21519/…
    – fearoffours
    Commented Nov 2, 2011 at 11:33

3 Answers 3

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To not waste all your effort about off-page SEO, you should make a Permanent Redirect (code 301) from your old domain to your new domain. But this will be not enough. Infact if you have many links to your website and especially to different pages, I suggest you to do a sort of map.

I mean, using the technique you like the most as .htaccess, a plugin if your company is using the Zend Framework, or whatever you want, do a map of the redirects. This will preserve for the most the link juice for those links, the pagerank, and all other good SEO factors. The map should be look like this:

www.olddomain.com/page1.html -> www.newdomain.com/page1.html
www.olddomain.com/page2.html -> www.newdomain.com/page2.html
www.olddomain.com/page3.html -> www.newdomain.com/page3.html

or, if you are totally changing your website, something like this:

www.olddomain.com/page1.html -> www.newdomain.com/section/page-title1
www.olddomain.com/page2.html -> www.newdomain.com/section/page-title2
www.olddomain.com/page3.html -> www.newdomain.com/section/page-title3

I hope this helps.

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For SEO reasons you should make a 301 (Redirect Permanent) redirect from your old domain to your new domain.

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  • For more information on what you could do past a 301 redirect, check out Google's "moving your site" Help Center entry.
    – John Mueller
    Commented Oct 31, 2011 at 10:36
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You forgot to DNAME old and new domain in DNS for some time

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  • Sorry, I don't understand what you mean there.
    – fearoffours
    Commented Oct 27, 2011 at 10:39
  • Read about DNAME, I think
    – Lazy Badger
    Commented Oct 27, 2011 at 12:21

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