I posted this once, but I must have been in the wrong forum. I apologize. I am weary and need a little help here. I have been making a directory which is optimized for Google and others, I do optimization very well. As I am building this directory I notice my competition has a similar site and I approach them and buy it. My site = new / proper SEO techniques / lots of content / mod-rewrite, the whole nine-yards... Site purchased = old (circa 2001 / archive.org / dmoz links / wonderful established listings under good keywords. However design is not so good - so old in fact that instead of using text for the title of the page, still using a graphic, etc... Now what I'd like to do is have my new site be what is getting accessed and gaining rank - but - I also know that moving things around things to fast can be disaster. My ideas have been to get my NEW site to be in the top of the listings on the old domain. Is any of this a proper way? (a) create a link on the old site to my new site .... the new site will be move to the old domain and reside in a sub-dir. when PR and SERPs catch it and I start ranking on the nice new stuff, slowly start .htacces 301 redirects from the old pages to the new ones. Finishing by moving the new index to the root directory finally overwriting the last of the old files. [very slowly] (b) just doing the .htaccess for every old page of his that has a different name. (c) I have the ability to change my NEW site's file names to the OLD site's file name. --- Those are my thoughts on the transfer from the old design to my new one, but I would of course appreciate any comments and help on any of this , please. I have purchased domains and websites from many people here and DNF, SP, etc.. so a little help now will keep a good buyer in your midsts
The major question is how is the older site you purchased ranking? Is it ranking well for any keywords?