How do I retain PR when I have to change urls?

[Leva]

I've got a site that's PR5 or 6 on most pages. I have several PR 6 pages that need to be moved due to a CMS that I'm installing. (I never counted on these pages having a high rank -- I threw some content up while I worked on the infrastructure behind the scene.)

What's the best way to move them so as to preserve the ranking and PR? *grin* I'm beating a major commercial site (alexa rank in the top 50) on some key searches, and I'd like to preserve that PR as much as possible!

Leva

[tedster]

Do you mean change the domain name, not just the page names? There's no good way to do this right now. A new domain almost always hits the "sandbox effect" and vanishes from the Google SERPs for weeks/months.

[2by4]

if the domain is the same, make sure your cms has search engine friendly urls, and when you move the content of the old pages to the cms, just add the necessary modrewrites, make sure to 301 them to the new urls. This works perfectly if you don't make a mistake, if you do make a mistake, then google will see duplicate content and dump the new pages, and possibly the old ones. So don't make a mistake. I do this a few times a year usually and I never have any issues.

You won't see the greenbar pr change, and I'm not totally sure that the pr will actually transfer to the new pages, but I think your serp position will.

[vinmax]

i have good rank at moment, but need to update/overhaul website.
do i overhaul or build a new site from scratch and just phase thru the sandbox