Redirecting of entire site to completely new domain

Site redirect to new .com domain

[caragh]

Hi,
A client is looking to redirect an entire corporate site from one .com domain to an entirely new .com domain as they are re-branding. We will certainly be recommending that they use a 301 redirect, however is this enough? This is a very large informational site with well over 1,000 pages. If we are working with them to ensure that the job is done properly are there any steps that we need to take prior to the re-direct and then during the weeks and months following the re-direct actually taking place?

Thanks for you help.

[Receptional]

Yes.

You need to first make a list of all pages indexed in Google and create a map of the new url equivalent in the new domain. You then need to ensure that each page gets the right 301 message when google hits and you need to pay attention to the old 404 page as a backstop.

Dixon.

[webboy1]

I would also suggest creating a google sitemap. It won't fire you up the search engines, but it might help, along with your 301's, speeding up the process of google recognising your new pages.

We are about to launch 3 new sites, all under their existing domains. However, the pages are now dynamic and have .php extentions instead of .htm (lots of good reasons for us doing this!)

We have created new .htaccess files full of 301's from old pages to new equivelant and created new Google sitemaps ready for the sites going live.

Sitemaps don't improve rankings, but they do guide google through your site, hopefully picking up all pages.