Transition from Old Site to New One

How to Keep negative impact to a minimum

[ThePhoenix]

I apologize to the admin if this is not the correct forum for this issue. Please move to the best possible location.

I am involved in a very large project. The purpose of this project is to re-invent our web presence.

Our current site is a few thousand pages. Our new site is also going to be a couple thousand pages.

Before I joined the project, the powers that be, thought they could just delete the old site, and upload the new one.

To make things more complicated, we are also going thru a brand change. Up until this point, the company has been promoting the .net, and all links pointing to us are going to the .net. When we launch the new site, we will be using the .com.

I have checked our backlinks in all of the various SE's, and all of the current backlinks are pointing to the .net.

I am very concerned as this could have a severe negative impact on our natural search rankings.

Can anyone point me in the correct direction so that we have a smooth transition to the new web presence.

-ThePhoenix

[Slade]

The answer is you want to absorb great portions of the forum content here on WebmasterWorld.

I suggest you begin by entering the following search into google, several of the results are relevant:

site:webmasterworld.com move websites

I would also try "move pages", "redirect", and perhaps "new domain".