Moving a site to another URL and changing subdirectories

hiding from spiders, redirection, resubmission

[Marcia]

I know I already asked something on this, but can't find it. I have to move a site from a subdomain at a free host that is banned from AV. Although it currently has rankings that could hardly be better in places, in addition to absence of AV it's been dropped by Google. Another site was dropped from Google at the same time - I resubmitted both and the other is nicely back, but not this one, so AV and Google are out.

70% of traffic is coming from Yahoo, 18% from MSN Search, and the rest from all others. While I don't like to give up the others, I believe being able to get listed with AV is worth taking the chance.

I have the domain index temporarily redirected to the current subdomain site with a js redirect backed up by a meta refresh, but want to start making the move. I'm putting noindex,nofollow on new pages, but don't know how trustworthy that is

How do I securely "hide" the domain from spiders, to make sure there's no duplication found, until I get it all moved over?

I have read conflicting advice on moving sites. First, I've read to move the whole thing, pull the old pages and submit them for 404's, then submit the new site. I've then read advice to put links on the old pages to the new, and the old will eventually die out. There are some links to one section of the current site that generate a lot of traffic and orders (cheerleading, and it's now the second round of busy season).

What is the safest way to move a site (hopefully a section at a time) and hopefully not lose link traffic?

I also want to change the subdirectory names - the subs get separate targeted listings and seem to be treated as a different site in places, even though it's all linked. I'd love to be able to redirect links for a while, if it's safely possible.

Thanks!

[Marcia]

Also, I'm a volunteer in the homepages community at an online community with upward of 100,000 sites. The entire lot will be migrated to a totally new system at the end of this month, with new URLs. There's a bit of an uproar, because most are personal sites with a lot of web rings and links.

These sites will redirect from the old URL to the new for two weeks, then it's all over but the shouting, and believe me, the shouting has already started.

I'm trying to give the best help I can for the move, which is slated to happen Oct. 24th, and will be hosting some chats as well as doing board posts. The members are yelling for permanent redirection, but it's highly doubful they'll get it.

My primary emphasis is for the business sites - and Im trying to emphasize that the new sites will be better for search engine listings, which they definitely will.

They'll need instructions on how to make the search engine changes - I want to make double sure I don't pass on any misinformation.

Any help on this will be highly appreciated - I'll be putting up a "helps page" on the subject to avoid doing a kazillion board posts.

TIA, Marcia