peeling

Hi,

I'm about to change a lot of content from one domain to another. Anyone do this before? What do I have to do with the old pages? How do I redirect them to point to the same content on the new pages? I have read a few faq's on the net, but I'd like your thoughts, before I start doing it.

Super Mod

Are you changing over to a new hosting account or are you just changing domains?

peeling

Domains. Host is the same. Moving from a sub-domain to a domain. I'm worried about the effect it'll have on search rankings. I want to re-direct the old pages to the same pages on the new domain. Any suggestions?

paperclip

I think it drops the rankings (correct me if I'm mistaken, oh masterminds) but they grow back up rather quickly since all the work had already been done.

__________________
If it ain't broke, fix it until it is

peeling

The drop is on account of the missing linkbacks. Everyone who's been linking to the old domain has to change their links to the new one. Then the search engines have to index all the pages in the new domain. And drop the pages in the old one. Takes a heck of a lot of time to get back to normal. And I'm still not sure about exactly what kind of redirection is required from the old pages to the new ones.

In short, it's a total mess. This is advice for any of you starting your own site. Buy a domain before you start and never, ever change domains!

melissajean85

Must be frustrating. I'll end up having to do the same thing, but I'm not even close to done yet, so I don't have to worry about it for a while. I've got a sub-domain right now and it will do for now. I wish I could help you, but I don't know what to tell you. Let me know if you figure out the best way to do it.

Melos

I agree about not changing domain names - I'm in the middle of a domain switch over right now, and its pretty much scrapped my search engine rankings, etc.
I built it once ... I will build it again.

peeling

Well. Thank you for your support and kind words, everyone. I managed to get it sorted out. What I did was edit every single page individually. Wiped out everything on each page, and put in a big and bold link to the corresponding page on the new site.

reviewer

That works too. Automatic redirects are great, but if that's not a possibility, a simple text link will work for most users.