Question about best practices moving a site to a shorter domain name

[julianm]

Hi Sirs,

I have a question. I own a domain name with 4 words separated by "-" and it was doing quite well for long time. I have been working with a SEO team to improve it and they did a great job, but now I have an important question about moving forward.

I was able to buy a domain name with 4 chars that is an abbreviation of the original domain name (with about 30 characters).

My question is, is there any good practice or best practice making that shorter domain name the homepage and completely use it instead of the longer one? (I am assuming that doing 301 Redirect is a possible solution, but in that case I am wondering what happen with the current page rank and the fact that the longer name has special keywords? )

Another possible approach that I am wondering is if for that new domain name I only use it as a separate homepage and the links continue pointing to the longer domain name. In that case the new 4 letter domain will be used only for brand purposes but the content will remain in the longer one.

I'd appreciate any thought or recommendation about which way to follow.
Thank in advance.

Julian

[HuskyPup]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld julianm

Do we assume you are going to replace example-example-example-example.com/example.html with example.com/example.html url for url?

No changes whatsoever to the files and extensions structure?

This is how I would do it, others will have differing opinions.

Upload the site to the new domain space, if it's on the same server even better, wait for the DNS to propagate if it is not already there and then re-direct from your registrar's control panel and point the old domain name at the new domain name.

Some control panels may want you to do both with and without www, some do both automatically.

Hey presto, old site on new domain name with all its backlinks intact and identical urls.

Ensure the new site is being seen everywhere and that direct type-ins to the old site go straight to the new site, when it does that delete the old site completely, do not leave any old files, references, whatever, otherwise your new site may just be seen as a duplicate.

but in that case I am wondering what happen with the current page rank and the fact that the longer name has special keywords?

Normally a direct replacement like this will retain all street credibility with all search engines, it may drop a little whilst they're sorting it out but usually this will be no more than a few weeks.

For best effect leave the old name pointing at the new name for as long as you can or until you are happy that the new site is ranking without its support.

Personally I would not change your index page titlebars for at least a couple of months or so until the SERPs have gotten used to your new name.