Forum Moderators: phranque
Both domains have content in 6 languages, with language change being done through &lang parameter (i.e. not through subdomains).
From 2002-2007 they were running two separate domains. 18 months ago the client has re-designed the site and as a part of redesign the web studio doing the work has suggested that they use HR domain as their main domain. The web studio has put 302 redirect from the root of the COM domain to the root of the HR domain. Internal pages are not re-directed.
Currently both domains show PR6 for home page, but internal pages have different PR. The number of pages indexed is also different, HR domain has over 2500 pages indexed while COM domain has just over 400 pages indexed.
Despite their PR and the age of domains, the client does not rank well for anything other than their own name.
The client is not interested in local HR market at all and it is not important for them to rank there. Almost all of their customers are international and therefore it would make much more sense on using COM domain.
I am wondering what would be the best way for swapping the domains over, so that COM domain is main domain and HR domain is re-directed to COM. Is it as simple as removing 302 from COM --> HR and instead using 301 for HR --> COM for both, domain root and internal pages? And updating external links to point to COM domain, of course.
Has anyone ever done it? I looked at posts about moving a domain to a new name, but they all involve brand new domain with no history. Here I want to move a domain to a new name which has continuously existed over the last 7 years and whose content was in fact exactly the same to the domain being moved already and has been so over the last 7 years.
Would the impact on ranking be the same as moving to a never used domain name? And what would be the best way to do this.
Many thanks
