Replacing an old site

[IsItUPYet]

We've had a site targetting localised keywords (E.g Widgets New York) for a couple of years. Whilst we have #1 rankings for most if not all of those keywords, however, due to them being somewhat specific we recieve a relitively humble amount of visitors from the search engines.

Recently, we've been developing a new site to replace the old; new content, new structure, more pages etc. in order to target more generic phrases. Of course, we understand that any success for these major keywords is likely to take time, if it happens at all.

In the mean time, we were hoping to keep the old site up somewhere so that we still rank for our current, 'lesser' keywords. What's the best way to do this?

We have two domains. Is it okay to leave the old site on one, and put the new one on the other?

OR

Would it be more sensible to take the old site down initially, and waiting for those pages to disappear from Google's index before reuploading the old site, in order to escape any duplicate content penalties?

I'd appreciate your thoughts.

[webdoctor]

We have two domains. Is it okay to leave the old site on one, and put the new one on the other?

Is the content broadly the same on the two sites? If so, there may be a risk (however slight) of tripping a duplicate content filter...

If you've got new content on the new domain, it's not an issue...

[IsItUPYet]

The content is freshly written; there are no extracts from the old content present in the new. However, the content is still about the same products and services, and taking into account the company name will also be present throughout, there will be some similarities in the words used.

That leads me to the question, how sensitive is the duplicate content filter? And what basis does it work on; would a similar number of the same words trigger it or do they have to be in the same order as the original source?

[Nikke]

I have no proof what so ever, but I have a feeling that the dupe filter isn't all that sensitive.

I often publish se same article on two or three websites with similar fokus, making sure to re-word every other sentence, restructure the texts, use different headlines and such.

In most cases both or all three of these pages turn up in Serps.

[promis]

I am also moving to a new site, but I'll use permanent redirect fro each page on the old site to each corresponding page on the new site. This way I expect to have no duplicate content issues and also keep my backlinks and possibly PR.

[LostOne]

"I am also moving to a new site, but I'll use permanent redirect fro each page on the old site to each corresponding page on the new site. This way I expect to have no duplicate content issues and also keep my backlinks and possibly PR."

Related

I've been thinking of a name change which would actually be a new site, but I'll have to hunt down a safe expired domain. I've worked extremely hard to get high in the serps for 15-16 months now and it has finally paid off.

Problem is our website title or current url confuses many. We started as a consumer resource guide in '02 but changed to become an etailer last year. I'm certain our sales would double with a different url. Anyone have any words of wisdom to make a change without losing all those great SERP positions? Does a permanent redirect really work? Problem is the site is already a redirect from another domain. Sounds like a mess eh?

Thanks for any responses.