How best to change a domain name & keep ranking?

[Henley]

A client wants to change his domain name but doesn't want to risk his present No1 ranking in Google under all his preferred searches.
What,please, is the best way of doing this?
The site currently has many inward links.
Thanks
Henley

[JaedensTwin]

As far as I've heard, there is no way to do this. Google cannot simply transfer rankings around. You have to make sure that every site that is pointing to the old site points to the new site to get the backlinks working.

Check out Googles FAQ page [google.com] with regard to this matter.

Jaeden

[seindal]

Make the old domain redirect to the new or set them up as aliases. A site can have many names, also on different domains.

René.

[bcc1234]

Do a permanet redirect (301) from your old domain to the new one page-by-page.

So if the client requests
www.oldname.com/myfile.html
the server should return
301 with location
www.newname.com/myfile.html

It's the best you can do.

[rfgdxm1]

bcc1234 has the right idea. Then work on getting the links changed. Most important links first.

[buckworks]

<<A client wants to change his domain name but doesn't want to risk his present No1 ranking>>

Make sure he understands it will take a LOT of work to request that existing "linkers" update the link. It's doable, as long as he's prepared to commit the resources and tolerate some hiccups along the way.

Is persuading him to leave well enough alone an option, or are there compelling business reasons for the change?

[Henley]

Buckworks,
No there are no compelling reasons for the change - simply cosmetic as far as I can tell.
But thanks everybody for riding to the rescue so quickly and giving me your best advice. I shall now digest it!
Made a complete mess of a change over recently (moving a site from one server to another and with a change of name)and have been UNRANKED by Google ever since and moved down in the SERPS.
Thanks again
Henley