How to move website to new domain?

[seo-mojo]

We have a website that has run under the same domain name for the past 10 years. We have built up a decent amount of SEO "mojo" (and traffic) over time, however, the original domain name no longer applies to the business model.

A little over 1 year ago we started using a new brand name for the website and created a landing page for that domain name. Everything on that landing page links over to pages on the original domain name (to preserve the SEO value that we have built up over the years).

We would like to move all (or most) of the pages/content to the new domain name. Would using 301 redirects be the safest, most effective way of doing this? I have heard of other people doing it this way, and often they will see their traffic drop for a few weeks before it eventually comes back.

Anyone else had experience with this? What worked? What didn't?

Thanks!

[ShaMenz]

Hi Doug,

301's are the right way to go as they pass link juice from the old domain and will preserve the traffic from existing external links.

The key here is "301's" (plural). Redirect each page on the old domain to the corresponding or relevant page on the new domain and also notify in Webmaster Tools that you have moved the site to the new domain.

There is some discussion of moving sites and using 301's in this SEOmoz Q&A post where I added a link to a Google Webmasters video that explains the process.