Its a very common question, i tried searching dp but no luck. I got a self hosted pr4 blog based on wordpress. Traffic is less but mostly organic. Domain is like 3 yr old.. No marketing done, no links bought, content is original written by myself, i barely update the thing like 2 , 3 time a month.. NOW, The prob is i want to move to a different domain, which i would be promoting via adwords, may be facebook, kindly tell me how should i do that with minimum damage to my organic traffic and softly changing all the indexed links with the new domain. What should i do with the domain i am currently using? Am really confused. Thanks in advance
It's actually quite simple.... you have to use a 301 redirect from each individual page to the equivalent new page on the new site. eg. http://myoldsite.com/page1.html ---> 301 redirect ---> http://mynewsite.com/page-1 Don't just 301 redirect all pages to the main domain of the new site ... you'll lose any search rankings if you do that.
DoA has said well already about the 301 and I would like to add a little. Here is quality sources you should read more further references. The 301 Redirect - Steven Hargrove : How to redirect a web page WordPress 301 redirect - Yoast - Tweaking Websites How to: Move a Website...Should You Fear 301 Redirects Hurting Your Rankings? <-- A must read