If i am launching a new site, different domain then current one and the old one has a PR of 4 with some decent SE traffic if i put a 301 redirect to the new site will the old site that has the redirect on it lose its rankings quick? or what is the best way to go about this. Or on hostgator does anyone know if i can just put up another site with a different domain kind of like a VPS with jumpline.
Is there a reason you want to redirect the old site to the new one? Are you simply trying to change domain names but have the content remain the same? Or do you have all new content at the new site? Have you considered maintaining 2 sites - whether indefinitely or while you build some links to your new site and get it to rank before implementing 301 redirects? Sorry I'm answering your question with more questions. Just don't like giving out advice that could wreck your rankings for some period of time till I know what your reasons are for the change and what you're ultimately trying to achieve. As soon as you put the 301 redirects in place you will take a hit on organic rankings and search traffic. You'll need to wait on Google to recrawl all of the links that point to the old URLs before the new URLs will get credit for all of the old inbound links. This can take a couple months... sometimes more... before your rankings return depending on how often the sites that link to the old URL get crawled. If your goal is to eliminate the old site and only have the new site then you definitely want to 301 redirect each old URL individually to the new URL whose content most closely matches the content of the old URL so that the link text in the links pointing to the old URL will be applicable to the new URL. The question is 'when'. There are several things to consider. You may want to consider leaving the old site as is in place until you can get the new site to rank for at least some of the same keyword phrases... Then implement the 301 redirects. This way you minimize the loss of traffic while the search engines absorb your changes and recrawl all of the inbound links, discover the 301 redirect for each inbound, and transfer credit for the old URL's inbound links and link text to the new URLs. If your site is seasonal (for example if most of your traffic/sales comes during a particular time of the year) then you don't want to implement 301s anywhere near that time as it will greatly affect your traffic and revenue, if applicable. If you can't account for every single URL on your old site then I would suggest that you download Xenu Sleuthe and crawl your site. You can save the results to an .CSV file and load it up in Excel to get a list of all of the URLs currently being linked to from your site. So it's a decent inventory of URLs. You'll use this list to map out all of your 301 redirects. You may also want to look at your web analytics or server logs to see what other URLs might still be linked to by external sites and ranking which your site no longer links to (orphaned pages). You can also use your web analytics and/or server logs to determine which URLs are ranking for which keyword phrases at which search engines. This can also help you map out which pages to redirect the old URL to and also help you to optimize the new page for the old keyword phrases. I made a post about 10 days ago on things to consider when you redesign your site. You'll have to scroll down to it. It may help to check it out. A lot of the items listed apply to what you're about to undergo. Obviously, the more planning you do, the easier the transition.
You may want to consider leaving the old site as is in place until you can get the new site to rank for at least some of the same keyword phrases... Then implement the 301 redirects