Options for diverting attention from domain name

[Thirdcatgy]

Hi,

I have an option to purchase a previous year-related domain name that has good presence (incoming links) for my local area:

example2003.org

I would like to convert the site to a commercial one, however, I am concerned about the impact of having 2003 in the URL itself.

Was interested to see if anyone might have recommendations on how to handle this (redirect?) and still maintain (and build on) the presence the URL currently retains?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts...

[Corey Bryant]

You can consider using a permanent redirect. This way you can still maintain the links, etc and get your new website spidered

-Corey

[Thirdcatgy]

Thanks for the reply Corey.

One followup if I can:

With the permanent redirect, would I still focus on link building to the old Url ( example2003.org ) since it's got current incoming links from important sites that will never be changed over to the new site?