What to do with old domain?

[RESteve]

When redo'ing your site, is it best to start with a new domain and fresh? My current site has a PR4, has been around for over 2.5 years, and am either a) going to redo it on the same domain or b) start a new domain and link my old to the new.

Should I redesign the old one or just let it be and create a 100% new site?

[Graeme]

If the old domain is your primary site I would keep using that domain unless you think it has some kind of penalty

[RESteve]

If the old domain is your primary site I would keep using that domain unless you think it has some kind of penalty

So you are saying to design a new site with new domain; start fresh?

[Graeme]

Stick with the old domain and launch the redesign on the current domain. SInce that one already has page rank and generates business you want it to be the best it can be.

Personally, I like to have a few domains working for me so I would start to develop the new domain with unique content. You can use your current template for this site.

[RESteve]

I was hoping that that would be the best route. How will it work with google - being that I have a new site that will replace the current on the same domain. All the current indexed pages may eventually read a 404 - not found due to a new file structure.

Wouldn't this hurt SEO - or would the negative aspects of this be short lived?

[drang3d]

Would you not keep the old content and do a 301 redirect to the new location of the articles based on the new site structure?

[RESteve]

Well I've just never done that before, so wasn't sure on how that all works. So it's that simple then? Good. I can use my current sitemap to derive a list of links, along with indexed content in google, and basically do the 301.

[drang3d]

How to implement the 301 Redirect

1. To create a .htaccess file, open notepad, name and save
the file as .htaccess (there is no extension).

2. If you already have a .htaccess file on your server,
download it to your desktop for editing.

3. Place this code in your .htaccess file:

redirect 301 /old/old.htm http://www.you.com/new.htm

4. If the .htaccess file already has lines of code in it,
skip a line, then add the above code.

5. Save the .htaccess file

6. Upload this file to the root folder of your server.

[RESteve]

Wow - I didn't know it was so simple.

Thanks a bunch, Dranged. I'm going to mess around with this today to repoint some old urls that I have.

[webmaster]

Are you talking about doing a redesign only? If that is the case, why would you need to rename the files at all? Unless you were going from a .cfm or .aspx url structure to something that doesn't support those extensions, there should be no reason to change your filenames at all.

If you DID need to, the 301 would be the way to go, it is wicked easy