Changing my domain --

How do I go about switching my PR to the new domain?

[ariff44]

I am redesigning my site, which has a PR 7, and I want to give it a better brand name (to focus on a bigger market).

However, how do I transfer the PR from my present domain name to the new one? Is this possible? If not, what is the next best thing?

Thanks

[born2drv]

You can't transfer your PR. The only thing you can really do is ask all the webmasters linking to you to change the URL.

If it's only a handful of PR5-8 sites that have given you your PR7, then I'd start with the highest PR first and work your way down the list. That should get you your PR7 back in a 2-3 updates I would think. Then just do a 301 redirect to the new site.

Now if you have a PR7 by virtue of 10,000 PR3-5 links for exmaple, it will be much harder and I would advise you to just leave it alone and build a new site from scratch and run both :)

[bhartzer]

You can't "transfer" your PageRank from one domain to a new one. You'll have to start all over. If you absolutely must change your domain name, then you'll have to contact all of the other sites that are linking to you and hope that they'll update the link to your new domain name.

The only other thing to do is to find an expired domain name that's available that already has a lot of links going to it (that are appropriate links to your new subject) and by turning on the new domain name and putting content on it you might be able to save some of the traffic. Be cautious, though, as some search engines are now frowning on that and/or discount the links to expired domain names.

Personally, I would keep the same domain name and change the content of the site. I've run into this same issue before, but it was for a site that I sold to someone else (content and the domain name). Unfortunately, it's just one of those things that you have to deal with: starting over.

[ariff44]

you mentioned opening another site with the new domain and using both...however, its pretty much the same content as before....so I don't want to get hit with dup content?

[WebGuerrilla]

You can't "transfer" your PageRank from one domain to a new one. You'll have to start all over.

Not completely true. If you setup a 301 redirect on the old domain, you will eventually get credit for pre-existing links. It doesn't happen over night, but it does happen.

The only other thing to do is to find an expired domain name that's available that already has a lot of links going to it

I wouldn't waste time doing that. Google has a new expired domain filter that is supposed to set all backlinks to zero when a domain expires.

The best strategy is to setup a proper redirect, and then try and get the most important links changed.

[pixel_juice]

>>If you setup a 301 redirect on the old domain, you will eventually get credit for pre-existing links. It doesn't happen over night, but it does happen

I can confirm (if it were needed from a source such as WebGuerilla ;)) that this works. You can transfer PR from one domain to another, if you control both domains.

>>The only other thing to do is to find an expired domain name

Again, I agree with WebGuerilla. This is a futile exercise.

[ariff44]

I would set up a redirect from the old domain to the new using a 301? Just do it for the index page or all pages? I have about 400?

[pixel_juice]

>>Just do it for the index page or all pages?

Set the whole domain to 301 to the new domain - this way all requests for the previous domain are forwarded to the appropriate page on the new site.

[WebGuerrilla]

ariff44,

If you want to learn more about how to set up proper 301's, I'd suggest spending some time in our

Website Technologies Forum [webmasterworld.com]

A particularly good thread (if your site is running Apache) is:

[webmasterworld.com...]