Domain Transfer Process / Bulk 301's Using IIS

[Bandicoot]

Hi guys - I am getting ready to do a complete domain transfer from one domain to another completely different domain for a client due to a branding/name change. 2 things - first, I wanted to lay out a summary of my process and see if everyone agrees that its a good approach, and second, my client is using IIS, so I wanted to see if anyone out there knows a bulk tool that can be used to implement 301's on the hundreds of pages that the site contains? I have found the process to redirect each individual page, but over hundreds its a daunting task to look at.

The nice thing about the domain transfer is that it is going to be a literal 1:1 transfer, with the only things changing being the logo and the name mentions. Everything else is going to stay exactly the same, for the most part. I will use dummy domain names in the explanation to keep things easy to follow: www.old-domain.com and www.new-domain.com. The client's existing home page has a 5/10 GPR, so of course, transferring Mojo is very important.

The process:

1. Clean up existing site 404's, duplicate tags and titles, etc. (good time to clean house).
2. Create identical domain structure tree, changing all URL's (for instance) from www.old-domain.com/freestuff to www.newdomain.com/freestuff.
3. Push several pages to a dev environment to test (dev.new-domain.com). Also, replace all instances of old brand name (images and text) with new brand name.
4. Set up 301 redirects (here is where my IIS question comes in below). Each page will be set up to redirect to the new permanent destination with a 301. TEST a few.
5. Choose lowest traffic time of week (from analytics data) to make the transfer ALL AT ONCE, including pushing new content live to the server for www.new-domain.com and implementing the 301's. As opposed to moving over parts of the site in chunks, moving the site over in one swoop avoids potential duplicate content issues, since the content on the new domain is essentially exactly the same as the old domain. Of course, all of the steps so far would apply to the existing sub-domains as well, IE video.new-domain.com.
6. Check for errors and problems with resolution issues. Check again. Check again.
7. Write to (as many as possible) link partners and inform them of new domain and ask links to be switched (for existing links) and updated (for future links) to the new domain. Even though 301's will redirect link juice, the actual link to the new domain page without the redirect is preferred.
8. Track rank of targeted keywords, overall domain importance and GPR over time to ensure that you re-establish your Mojo quickly.
9. That's it!

Ok, so everyone, please give me your feedback on that process!!

Secondly, as you can see in the middle of that process, the "implement 301's" section seems easier said than done, especially when you are redirecting each page individually (would take days). So, the question here is, does anyone know of a way to implement bulk 301's for each individual page using IIS? From what I understand, in an Apache environment .htaccess can be used, but I really have not been able to find any info regarding how to do this in bulk using IIS. Any help here would be GREATLY APPRECIATED!!

[nwinternetmarketing]

Heyas,

So I got great news for you.  Since Step 2 results in identical file structures, you shouldn't need crazy 301's.

In fact, all you need to do is setup a wildcard redirect. In IIS, edit web.config file, modify or add
the following section to its rewrite section

 <rewrite><rules><rule name="old to new" enabled="true"><match url="(.*)"><conditions><add input="{HTTP_HOST}" negate="true" pattern="^www\.([.a-zA-Z0-9]+)$"></add></conditions> 
         <action type="Redirect" url="<a href=" http:="" www.newdomain.com="" {r:0"="">http://www.NEWDOMAIN.com/{R:0}" appendQueryString="true" redirectType="Permanent" /></action></match></rule></rules></rewrite> 

Additionally, you can use the web install manager to install the
RewriteModule. Coming from *, I actually will give praise to M$
 on the GUI / ease of use.

[Bandicoot]

Hi Jacob -- awesome, thanks so much for sending this. Just to clarify - I'm assuming that this is ONLY USABLE if the new file structure is in fact IDENTICAL, correct?

[nwinternetmarketing]

Yes.  Since the files will be the same, you're just swapping the domain.

[Bandicoot]

Is it better from an SEO perspective to have actual 301's in place for each page, as opposed to one for all?

[Bandicoot]

any answer here Jacob?