Moving to new domain, keeping Google index intact ?

Hi, we have a established website with more 30k visitors everyday, but we got an awesome domain for it finally after 3 years go struggle, and we want to move to that.

So, we have copied the website to the new domain already.
And added it to google webmaster tools and filled the change in address form as well.

What else shall be done, so I dont lose my old indexing and traffic ?

 

As far as I knew some time ago, it was mandatory to add a 301 redirect to the old domain to the new one. A 301 redirect is AFAIK the most SEO-friendly permanent method when moving to a new domain, you can use .htaccess to do it or simple PHP:

<?php
Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Header( "Location: http://www.new-url.com" );
?> 

Code (markup):

Using a 301 redirect the old page will be removed from the google index and the new one will replace it. You can get more details about this Googling: seo-friendly 301 redirect.

 

Whats the htaccess for domain direction ?

For example, lets say google has indexed,
www.domain.com/about-us/

And we need that when someone clicks on www.domain.com/about-us/ , he should automatically goto www.domainnew.com/about-us/

 

AFAIK, when using a 301 redirect on .htaccess it redirects all the related pages, it replaces the old domain in the google index and then indexes the new one, with all related pages.

.htaccess code to put on the old domain:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Code (markup):

Redirects everything after the domain name on the url to the exact same copy on the new one.

 

That did it.
Thanks man!!

 

For SEO you need to 301 redirect the old URLs to the new URLs.

 

Done, it worked. Thanks

 

I would suggest getting a help from an SEO expert in your location to ensure everything is working fine. That's a massive number of visitors on your website and I would hate to lose it for any reason.

 

Double check every page (yes, it's a time consuming...), but if just any link doesn't redirect to ITS copied one ("about us" to "about us", etc.), you will lose link juice and rankings too!

 

One issue, I see.
In google, now all my URLs are showing,
www.domain.com/abc or www.domain.com/abcsddd

And it goes to 404 not found.

Can I make a htaccess rule, so that any requests made to www.domain.com/xxx gets automatically redirected to www.domain.com ?

As I have a parked page live on www.domain.com, which has link for the new website.

 

Can someone help with the code to redirect all requests to main domain please ?

 

Just keep in mind that it takes some time for all your rank etc to move to the new domain, and if you provide me with what kind of site do you have I can help you, anyway this universal code should redirect everything:

Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?old\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^ http://www.new.com/ [R=301,L]

Code (markup):

 

Doesnt work.
Shows 404

 

Any other way please ?
We have received 108000 404 clicks

 

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.net/$1 [L,R=301,NC]

If you still can't do it, hire me or someone else.
It seems you are from Odisha too. Nice to meet some odia here.