How to change website from .COM to .ORG while preserving Pagerank and inbound links

[Industry]

A charity wants to change thier domain hame form .COM to .ORG. What is the best way to do this without losing their Page rank and innbound links?

[Brett_Tabke]

301 redirect.

Then after about six months - put some actual content on the dot.com. You will then have the chance of taking over 2 slots in the serps because the dot com will have authority and some remaining backlinks out there.

[Webwork]

The advice I've most often read is to (slowly) 301 permanent redirect old site/pages to new site/pages, keeping an eye on the new site's performance. (I'm not 100% certain that "slow redirecting" is universal advice.)

Since it's a charity you might have some success asking inbound linkers to point their links to the new site/pages.

Finally, I'm not sure if there's (an effective) way throught G's webmaster tools to "tell G" about the move.

Any other ideas/suggestions?

[edited by: Webwork at 2:51 pm (utc) on Sep 7, 2010]

[phranque]

Moving old site to a brand new (never existed) domain:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4105767.htm [webmasterworld.com]

Webmaster Tools - Change of address:
(in webmaster tools it is the "Site configuration"/"Change of address" feature)

Moving your site - Webmaster Tools Help:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=83105&hl=en [google.com]

[Webwork]

Phranque - "You da man!" :)