Correct way to redirect a domain

Can someone please explain what is the correct way to redirect a domain? For example, I own www.myniche.com and have been running it successfully for a couple of years. I recently purchase my competitor's website; www.sameniche.com and would like to redirect all traffic from the new domain to my original domain.

Is the correct way a 301 redirect using .htaccess file? Or can I simply point the new domain to the same directory as the old domain through my cpanel from my host?

Thanks,

John

 

Is the correct way a 301 redirect using .htaccess file?

Yes

 

It will work either way.

You can also use meta refresh in the index.html file for the new domain.

Do whatever suits you, either way it'll take less time that it took you to create this thread

 

You are right. This is the only correct way to do it from a SEO prospective.

It will be even better if you can do a page by page redirect from the main pages of the competitor's website to the corresponding pages of your website.

Jean-Luc

 

Thanks for the responses. Question answered. Thread may be closed.

 

I went ahead and created an .htaccess file to redirect the traffic...

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

Code (markup):

...is there a way to track which traffic is coming from the new domain

 

one more question here. What would be Google's actions when he sees this redirection?

1. Will the PR of redirected domain affect somehow the destination domain?
2. Will backlinks to the redirected domain be count (in Google eyes) as links to the destination domain, and thus increase importance of it?

To the 2nd question, I this yes. Can someone confirm? Thanks!

 

what's the best technique considering SEO?

 

From the responses I have heard from these forums as well as others. The 301 redirect via .htaccess file would be.

Good questions that I was asking myself.

 

Regarding this question, after some experiments, I guess the answer is YES, because after I redirected few old useless domains to my main one, I could see a strong increase of the backlinks in the Google's webmaster tools. I checked the mentioned places and I could only see there links to these secondary, redirected domains.