How to migrate a site without losing page rank and traffic?

[cache]

I have a forum run on domain_old.com, I would like to switch it to domain_new.com
what is the best way to do it without losing the traffic, losing page rank or google indexing?


Thanks.

 

[AzN]

I recall reading before a 301 redirect should do it. Please check up on this to confirm.

 

[shockie]

301 redirect via .htaccess is the way to go.

first thing you should do is make a (sql) backup of the entire forum. then put this in your htaccess file, or create one if necessary:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !newdomain.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://newdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

 

[weblord]

im not sure if pr can be transferred but the traffic can.
add all 404 redirect as well

 

[shockie]

im not sure if pr can be transferred but the traffic can.

pagerank should be transferred as well because googlebot will follow the rewrite :tu:

 

[weblord]

ah i see, learned something new everyday, thanks

pagerank should be transferred as well because googlebot will follow the rewrite :tu:

 

[cache]

301 redirect via .htaccess is the way to go.

first thing you should do is make a (sql) backup of the entire forum. then put this in your htaccess file, or create one if necessary:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !newdomain.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://newdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

thanks for your reply. Your code above worked. However the following code did
not work (I copied from some other sites), do you know why it does not
work?
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^newdomain.com [nc]
RewriteRule (.*) http://newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

I have another problems, I need to direct all access from old_domain.com to
new_domain.com/forums

I tried to use
RewriteRule (.*) http:// newdomain.com/forums/ [R=301,L]

however it does not work.
Any suggestions?

 

[cache]

I figured out the problem, it is the browser cache, it actually works if
you use a different browser.

My problem is now:
does redirect to a subdirectory hurt my page rank?

I have a vbulletin forum site located at
old_domain.com/
I would like to move it to a new site in a subdirectory in:
new_domain.com/forums/

I plan to do a 301 redirect as follows:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://newdomain.com/forums/$1 [R=301,L]

Do you think I would loose my page rank and links because of moving
to a subdirectory /forums/ ?

 

[mwzd]

Do you think I would loose my page rank and links because of moving to a subdirectory /forums/ ?

I don't think so but don't honestly know for sure.

But why not use the root? Unless of course you want to embed the forum.

If the redirect works fine, don't see why the PR shouldn't transfer though.

 

[cache]

I don't think so but don't honestly know for sure.

But why not use the root? Unless of course you want to embed the forum.

If the redirect works fine, don't see why the PR shouldn't transfer though.

thanks for your reply. I have to use /forum because I wanted to use
the root as a portal (I use drupal's vbdrupal to be in the root).

The redirect is fine, my only worry is that some of the hard coded
backlinks may be lost. I agree with you that if the redirect works, this
may be OK. I just wanted to make sure because I don't want to loose
the ranking and indexing.

Is there any method to monitor this process to make correction if
it is needed? (any webtools to use for example?)

 

[cache]

Finally, I made the move:

I have just 301 redirected http://IJFG.com to http://trik.com/forum
However I don't see any page rank transferred to the new site, even though I do
see the traffic transferred (IJFG.com has Alexa ranking of 370,231).

How long can I see the page rank transferred? I am worried that I may still not have done everything correctly. Let me know if you see any mistakes in my process.

Thanks.

 

[cache]

after 2 months, I have lost the pagerank. Don't know why.

http://trik.com/forum has zero pagerank, although traffic is still as usual.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Timewarp]

maybe the subdir was a problem after all or it could still be readjusting itself.

probably do more harm then good at this point but i wonder if a forward to a root directory at forums.trik.com would have worked better.

is webmaster tools reporting any broken links/ unloadable pages for either the old or new domain?