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Alrighty!
Backup your current website and ALL directories EXACTLY how you have them now, file names, folder names, server structure...you catch my drift.
Now go register your new domain name, and go back to your old one and switch the DNS to point to the new name and hosting service. Make sure you have your COMPLETE backed up web site on the new hosting service which is attached to the domain name. This will be a flawless transfer, providing you do not have any database stuff going on with your previous one. You wont loose ranking and you wont be affected by anything from the engines. Keep it clean. :) simple!
-Bar
I am maintaining a set of webpages on a free webpage provider for the last 8 years... am thinking of registering my own domain name...
edaindia - If I read what you're saying correctly, you don't actually own the domain you're on... you just have some pages on it.
From what you said, it also sounds unlikely that you'll have any control over the DNS that points to the domain you're currently on, or any access to doing a redirect from the current domain's web server, so BarHopper's advice doesn't really make sense to me.
What is the best way to achieve this without loosing my ranking?
It's likely that you would lose ranking with any change you made to a new domain, whether you controlled the old one or not.
On Google, if you controlled both domains, you'd still suffer age related ranking problems after you redirected to the new one.
And, since you can't do server side permanent redirects of your old pages to your new pages, you're going to lose your inbound linking credits.
This is a classic case of the problem anyone not controlling their own domain will eventually face. Thinking out loud about what you might do....
You could...
a) leave your current site as is and then build a new one, being careful not to duplicate content...
b) or you could move your current site to a new domain, and try to get as many of the webmasters who linked to your first pages to link to your new pages.
If you do (b) and put your old content on the new domain, be sure to drop your content from the old pages, or the search engines will see a duplicate content situation and probably not rank your new domain.
Also, if you choose option (b), you can either link to your new domain from your old pages, or else use a meta refresh redirecting them to the new domain. Generally, meta refresh redirects are to be avoided, but this is the only redirect option you have. Maybe others who've done it can advise.
Before dropping your old pages, you should check your backlinks (inbound links to your current pages) on Yahoo's Site Explorer and on MSN, to see how many pages from other sites are linking to you. Make a careful list of who they are, with as much specific information as possible (eg, linking page, destination page, anchor text, contact info, etc). You're going to need to ask the site owners to change their links to your new site.
Your success in changing over your links will have a lot to do with how fast your new domain appears in Google. If your rankings are link driven, be prepared to lose rankings for six months to a year. If they're for non-competitive searches that don't depend on inbound links, you may recover serp position much sooner.
