Re-Directing Domain Names

[BigOne]

I have been getting a few questions about how redirecting domain names will affect their search engine placement. What is the correct or best answer for this type of question.

[ihelpyou]

Don't redirect. No need to. Use one domain for your site. If you have to redirect, get rid of the old one so you don't have to redirect anymore. :)

[BigOne]

I am thinking about people who already have good search engine placement with their current website and want to redirect the same domain name to their website we have created for them.

[Advisor]

Originally posted by BigOne
I am thinking about people who already have good search engine placement with their current website and want to redirect the same domain name to their website we have created for them. If they've already got good placement, why do they need you to create them a new one? I'm confused!

Jill

[BigOne]

What happens is that realtors create websites for themselves........then they hear about our software and great real estate product and sign up to create a website with us. Then they wanna redirect their cuurent site to the recently created site we provide them with.

[ihelpyou]

That's simply "tough". A new site, new ranks,... start all over. It's their fault they want a new site. Tell them to keep redirecting to the new one to see how fast both domains get penalized.

[Advisor]

Oh I see.

Well, they can certainly do that by permanently redirecting their old site to yours with a 301 permanent redirect at the server level. But make sure they know that they will eventually lose all their rankings with the old site, since they now have a new site.

I would recommend that they don't try to redirect anything for that reason.

I sure hope they understood what they were getting into by having you create them a site when they already had good results on their existing site!

Jill

[Christian_SEO]

Unless I'm misunderstanding, it's not a redirect. It's a site re-design...if you look at it that way.

The domain IS changed to point to new content, but there is no "re-direction" really. It the same unfortunite thing that happens when the site is re-designed and all the old files are deleted and replaced with new files.

The fact that the site is now on another server/IP, shouldn't really be a consideration, although I've seen signs that non-virtual sites do a little better than virtual ones in general, or I did about three years ago.

So, to me, it's not the re-direct that's an issue, but the fact that any of the old site's pages that were indexed will not work unless you re-create the same page name on the new site, OR create on of those damned (it'sjust LAZY!) custom error pages to catch the old page traffic.

In my opinion the best solution is to:

1) Duplicate all the old pages on the new server.

2) Each page only has a re-direction message, no other content

3) Each page does a timed (30 sec.) refresh to the same content, or the home page

Leave these pages up for 1-3 months and then delete, but still have a damned custom 404 page 'cuz it makes sense...!

Thanks,
Christian

[Christian_SEO]

Never mind.

I think it's going to take more than that......

http://www.google.com/search?q=KealeyGroup&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&filter=0

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=site:www%2Emichelbrissette%2Ecom+michelbrissette

Christian