Repercussion of Changing URLs

[Tyler]

Well we did it today! :bananad: After a few weeks of planning, we finally was happy with a domain. About the middle of November we announced the changes, and all of our members were hyped up. We are now very psyched as everything is going great so far. The only thing that worries me is that the amount of incoming links to the new URL. I changed all of my signatures, and my links. I can't really control people's websites/signatures, I guess I'll have to wait on 'em to notice. But, does anyone have some thought on how to make less impact (SEO) wise on the move? I'm hoping to get listed in some forum directories to increase the incoming links. But other then that and the mod_rewrite I'm worried. :s

[writespeak]

...does anyone have some thought on how to make less impact (SEO) wise on the move?

Coincidentally, I read something about that the other day.

From highrankings.com (http://www.highrankings.com/issue154.htm#seo4):

Your best bet is to do a 302 redirect from the old to the new (yes 302 not 301) and get as many of your old links pointing to the new domain. Then when you're out of the aging delay with the new site (on avg. 9 months) you can change it to a 301 redirect, which will help to transfer the link popularity of any remaining links that couldn't be changed.

Scottie Claiborne has a good article from a past newsletter on this topic called Switching to a New Domain Name Without Losing Rankings (http://www.highrankings.com/issue142.htm#guest), which is a must-read for anyone in your situation.

I haven't tried out this advice, but there it is if you want to try it. :)

Lois

[Tyler]

Hm....I really like how mod_rewrite does it. But I've bookmarked that article, thanks Lois :)

[Lurker]

Good luck with the move, I hope all goes well :)

[Scott]

Interesting quote Lois, since this article (http://www.seotoday.com/browse.php/category/articles/id/477/index.php) seems to suggest that 302 redirects can cause problems:
Don’t take chances of having your site banned like Business.com was earlier this year. A “302 redirect” command is an invitation for getting your site banned, since search engines don’t like temporary redirects.

Shame so little proof exists for either side.

[Tyler]

Good luck with the move, I hope all goes well :)

Thanks :)

Shame so little proof exists for either side.

Seems only Google and the others know. :bonk:

[westcan]

No wonder I couldn't find your site

[John D]

I would like to hear a lot more on this too.

I have a decent number of unique visitors to my site and a lot of SE results but the new domain I got for the site is a lot better so I want to make that the main domain.

[Tyler]

I would like to hear a lot more on this too.

I have a decent number of unique visitors to my site and a lot of SE results but the new domain I got for the site is a lot better so I want to make that the main domain.

I can't comment too much now John, as it's still "happening" with me....But, so far so good. All users were very happy about the move. We do Google/Yahoo! Sitemap service to try and speed up the process. Currently Google only has our website listed and the meta description, nothing indexed yet.

All users are getting redirected, so that's the part I was most worried about :D

[PHPGeek2k3]

i would contact all the major websites it possible that are not a community forum and have them update their links if possible. i understand that this can be a tedious process as there can be thousands if not millions of links leading to one website.

Thanks
- James