planning to change the domain name I have had for 4 months will a 301 redirect all transfer all link popularity and page rank to the new domain? The new domain will be a totally revamped site but with the same content and theme. The site is still in the sandbox (not rank in G but top 10 for Y). Is this a risky move? What should I do in addition besides the 301 redirect?
The 301 redirect should cover the link pop xfer etc for Google but sometimes Y can choke on them. I would not worry about extra steps except perhaps contacting existing partners and asking politely if they would change the destination as someday you will want to kaput the 301
What should you do in addition? A lot... You need to start tracking down each and every backlink to your site, emailing the webmasters, and requesting that they update your link. Then, after a reasonable amount of time, recheck backlinks to the old URL and repeat the process. You will most likely have to do this several times and even then some of the links won't be updated. I went through this about 6 years ago and it was the best part of a year to get the majority of the links converted (of course, that will depend on how many backlinks the site has now). To find backlinks, use several search engines with their equivalent of the link: syntax and entering the URL itself -- for Google, don't bother with link at all: use alternate syntax to get at the links. You may have a lot of work ahead of you, spiderbot.
Minstel, good advice. Just out of interest did this affect your serps? I was thinking about doing the same thing, but my site is nearly 3 years old, and rankings in Google are good at the moment.
Yes it did, although I worked very hard over several months to successfully regain them. Mine was an unusual situation because the site was mine in that I developed, designed, and maintained it but I had joined a partnership and brought the site in as a corporate site. That group disbanded and in the process of dissolving everything (sometimes with some acrimony) the domain name and the hosting, which were under the control by then of someone else in the group, lapsed. I did have approximately 2 months to redirect from the old site to the new but when the domain lapsed, because it had pretty good ranking on Google, Alta Vista, Yahoo, etc., was snapped up by a porn site who offered to sell it back to me at a ludicrous price - I told them to stuff it and then put my energies into making the old site worthless. It was a nightmare and a lot of work to regain position. I don't recommend it to anyone but I will say I learned a whole lot about the 'net in general and about site promotion and SEO in a short period of time as a result.
since I am spiderbot tracking the links should not be a problem lol one question on marketleap backlink check I recorded 1650 to 1880 links on yahoo, alltheweb and altavista but for G, MSN and hotbot only record 40 to 65 I check my backlink with alexa (198 ;which I think should be the more accurate number. seems to me that yahoo alltheweb and alta list everything you can find including historical link, Alexa has a more acurate number , as for G, hotbot and MSN ; they seem to be missing a lot or are too slow Many thanks for all the advise given!
Alexa is probably the LEAST accurate. For Google, see this Google Advanced Search Operators thread. In particular, try @:url and the various "allin-" syntax variations. For Yahoo, see this Yahoo Search Operators thread. For MSN, see this MSN Advanced Search Operators thread.