Best way to do this? : Maintain search engine results with replacement website?

[Draeger]

Hi,

Long story but I'll try and keep it brief.

I designed a basic website for the company my wife works for. It's been online for a couple of years now and for the given search engine phrases and keywords we required it to be found with, its on page 1 of the major engines results.

Last week it transpired that one of the business partners is moving on to pastures new so a brand new website is going to be required. A new domain will need to be registered as the current one is a combination of two names and one of the names is the person who is leaving. He isn't interested in keeping his "half" so to speak of the websites search results so I was wondering what the best way to go about maintaining ( to a certain degree ) the good search results we are getting at the moment when we put the new site up on the new domain, if this is even possible?.

Put a redirect on the old site to point to the new site?. For how long?. Or just remove the old site and put up a landing page meantime with something along the lines of "Company one has now become company 2 - Click here to go to our new website"??. Or do both?.

I've never had this situation arise before so any help is more than appreciated.

 

[Staffy]

301 redirect will redirect the search engines and tell them the pages have moved. Have a redirect for each page on the old site and have them point to new pages on the new one. The rankings will fluctuate but may not be as high due to the domain age and trust factors.

You could also do a redirect for the visitors on the site:
either client side - javascript reliable but can have probs.
server side php or similar more reliable.

Just have a flash message saying you have moved domains and are now redirecting them.

 

[Draeger]

Thanks Staffy, I'll look into that.

 

[Staffy]

No probs... One other thing a couple of good quality links... not to many though.. and not all at the same time.. will also help the new site overcome it's problems... do a press release telling the web about the new brand and site.