Best way to convert an ISP free site to own domain

[MrSpeed]

I have a site with a url like
www.myisp.net/myusername/

I want to change this site to it's own domain without breaking existing links/bookmarks coming into the site.

How does the domain work in this situation? Is it just an alias to the current site/directory?

How would google view this? Would it be considered a mirror site and get dinged in the serps's?

Rich

[rfgdxm1]

Do you have hosting for that new domain name? Or do you want to just redirect/frame this domain name to the free ISP site? If you are moving to paid hosting, then put up on the ISP free webspace a "We have moved..." page.

[MrSpeed]

Let me elaborate a bit.
The site is currently at a very well known free host that is associated with Yahoo.

I would rather just keep the site on their servers and sign up for their 'pro' package for $8.95/month which incudes a domain and then slowly promote the domain.

I was just wondering how google views this, as two sites with exactly the same content?

I don't just want to simply redirect the domain to the current site because I know it's not cool to throw redirects at the SE's.

[rfgdxm1]

Does this Yahoo! host allow you to redirect the old URLs to the new domain name? If not, this could be a problem in knowing which is the real site. What you want to do is redirect all the old content to the new content.

[sun818]

I want to change this site to it's own domain without breaking existing links/bookmarks coming into the site.

Ask the web sites to change their link text to the new site. (Incidentally, this will also be a good time to request a specific link text change for SEO.) You can make your new site not indexable by Google until all the link changes are made. Then once you feel satisfied with the link changes, your new site can allow indexing. Your old site can have all the content removed with a link or a Javascript re-directing to the new site.

This is what I would do, but there are many ways to do what you want.