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I want to change the name of my establishedsite.com to newsite.com
establishedsite.com obviously has many inbound links and pagerank while newsite.com has none. If I copy all the content from establishedsite.com to newsite.com, then newsite.com will be penalized for duplicate content.
But if I slowly get everyone to switch all inbound links from establishedsite.com to newsite.com, will Google at some point realize newsite.com has more inbound links than establishedsite.com and stop penalizing newsite.com and penalize establishedsite.com instead? And then I could drop establishedsite.com all together.
Is there a better way of doing this? I need to change the domain name, but I don't want to cause too much trouble for newsite.com or even establishedsite.com in the interim.
Thanks.
I have moved sites fairly painlessly in the past by getting the incoming links updated to point to the new site, and placing 301-Moved Permanently redirects on the old site to redirect all "old" pages to their new URLs.
The 301 tells Google right up front that you've moved, and there is no need to "go slow" or worry about duplicate content issues.
Doing a WebmasterWorld search on "changing domain", "301 redirect", and similar phrases will turn up a lot of info on this, including some opinions which differ from mine.
HTH,
Jim
