Forum Moderators: open
I don't particularly have a problem with this since I've never liked the domain we have anyway. The only reason that we have it in the first place is the keyword in the domain name. And that keyword is insignificant compared to our other keyword traffic.
We do however have a great PR, a DMOZ entry, and we do really well in Yahoo and MSN as well for our target demo.
Can I rely on Google, Yahoo, MSN to honor the 301 redirects? The content will be the exact same as it is now, the coding, IP address,everything except we'll no longer be nearlyuselesskeyworddomain.com
Does anyone have any pointers or previous experience that they could talk about?
Some report little or no effect on their rankings but generally you can expect 3-12 months of disruption, i.e., reduced organic traffic.
Really no way around it though, if you want to move to a new domain.
Getting new links to the new domain will help. It's also worth trying to get those who link to you to update their links to the new URL's. A majority won't bother but some will help out. Worth the effort IMO.
The reason I ask is that you may find it difficult to setup redirects if you do not own the domain.
[edited by: MadeWillis at 5:52 pm (utc) on Aug. 22, 2008]
