How to use a 301 redirect

Moving a Website to a New Domain but Keep the Page Rank

Google Page Rank is important to a lot of people, and many base their decisions around it. There is now no excuse to stay with an underperforming or useless domain name if you can move it and keep the rank.

There are many reasons why you might want to move domain names. Two have already been mentioned. Usefulness is a big factor, one that most of the webmasters out there are keen to compete on. Underperforming is something else entirely. Some domain names just work, they do. They are either perfectly descriptive, niche names or you got there before everyone else did. If you have a page that appears high on the SERP, you may put up with bad ones in order to retain the result. Well no longer do you have to.

I have tried this one myself, which is why I’m writing about it now. I moved a site from a .com domain to a .org a little over three months ago. It had a Page Rank of four before the move, and I was a little apprehensive that all my good work would have been for naught. However, the new site is now back at four, right where we started from!

So here is what I did.

Firstly, and obviously I did a 301 redirect on the old domain and pointed it to the new one. Then I pointed the new .org domain to the website directory. Within that directory I created a folder called “com-site.” The name could have been anything but the descriptive title would remind me what it was if I was having a blonde day.

Within the “com-site” directory I created a new .htaccess file in order to tell browsers, and search engines what to do. The code I used was:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.websitename.org/$1 [R=301,L]

Then I tested from every browser that typing in the old .com address it redirected to the .org one. It may have been overkill, trying each browser, but it’s a habit I got into when first starting out in web design.

Then I pointed the old domain to the “com-site” directory and tested again with each browser. It didn’t work at first, but after a couple of hours it got picked up and started working properly. My patience was tested, as I was ready to take action and undo it all, but luckily I was interrupted by some work, and by the time I went back it was working.

I then updated the sitemap.xml file to reflect the new domain name and deleted the sitemap from Google. I replaced it with a new one and sat back to wait. Approximately three months later, after many days with the Google toolbar, it showed PR4 again. Not trusting the toolbar on its own, I went to Webmaster Central, and lo and behold, I was PR4 again!

I’m sure most of you out there already know this one, but I was so pleased it worked that I just had to share.