New bookingsengine url, what would you do?

[YannickVeys]

A client of mine is introducing a new and improved bookingsengine. They're launching it on a different url than the existing one. The existing one needs to stay online a little bit longer for affiliate purposes.

The old engine url has a sitelink in the SERPS and ranks well on a few terms.

I'm wondering what you would do in this case? They want the new url to rank as quickly as possible also as sitelink of course.

Any help greatly appreciated. I have some thoughts of my own of course... But to keep the discussion as wide as possible... I'll wait a bit to add m thoughts.

[ResslerMotors]

This really depends on the difficulty of your keywords.  If the market is very competitive, then don't expect to rank in the top three very quickly with a brand  new domain (it can be done, but it would take a lot of planning with link bait, and amazing execution of social media).  However, if you are in a relatively easy vertical, you could end up ranking twice in the same search (bonus!).

I would suggest:

Using the old domain

301'ing, or reusing any highly linked pages

submitting a new sitemap

Gaining a bunch of links to urge re-crawling

Having a sit down with the client before to explain possible short term ranking drops (Which sucks! They don't want to understand why)

Not checking the rankings every 30 minutes if drops occur.

[YannickVeys]

Thanks And would you suggest removing the old sitelink to make room for the new domain? How could we speed up the process of getting the sitelink up for the new domain?