[Hoover]

Hi,

I am working on this non-profit org website. Their current domain name is registered in the name of the guy who is no longer associated with the organization. The domain name is going to expire in couple of months. We have registered for a new domain name. It will be up in couple of weeks as soon as I am done working on the website.

My question is, the current website is #1 on google for a couple of search terms. What can I do to retain the high page rank after we switch over to the new domain name/new server?

Thanks.

[T2DMan]

Originally Posted by Hoover

Hi,

I am working on this non-profit org website. Their current domain name is registered in the name of the guy who is no longer associated with the organization. The domain name is going to expire in couple of months. We have registered for a new domain name. It will be up in couple of weeks as soon as I am done working on the website.

My question is, the current website is #1 on google for a couple of search terms. What can I do to retain the high page rank after we switch over to the new domain name/new server?

Thanks.

Best way to retain the search engine listings is to keep the old domain, and don't move. Get the domain transfered to the new persons details.

Otherwise, extend the registration of the old domain. Then 301 redirect all pages from it via say .htaccess to the new domain. In this way you will retain all the value from the incoming links until you contact them to change to your new domain.

However, you may still go into what is called a sandbox where the new domain is not ranked for competitive search phrases until after 6+ months.

Transferring to a new domain has some potentially large costs in downsized search engine traffic.

[Gracia]

Don't change the domain name! Changing domains for a site that ranks number one is just about the worst thing you can do. Find a way to have him change the information so the organization controls it.

If you can't do that you're more or less in big trouble. You can use the following code to redirect the domain while it still works but it might already be too late for this to be successful. You'll need to add the following lines of code to a file called .htaccess and place it in the root directory of the old domain:

RewriteEngine OnRewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?old-domain\.com$ [NC]RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.new-domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Once the domain expires this will no longer have any effect for you.

Changing servers does not affect rankings so don't worry about that.