Domain Change, Same Content ( Advice Needed )

[RMcdonald]

Hi guys,

So I have a site I setup a while ago on what I thought was a good aged domain. Turns out it was a non starter and pretty weak in terms of metrics.

Anyways, to get straight to the point, I want to keep the content of the site as it's great written content. My question is, what is the best way to move the content to a new aged domain I have recently purchased without causing duplicate content in Google.

I will 301 the old domain to the new one anyways, just wanted to see what everyone else's usual technique is.

Thanks!

 

[Future State]

@RMcdonald, that's what you would do. 301 each page from the old domain to the proper URL on the new domain. You should be able to do it all with one line in the .htaccess file with Regex.

It's a good idea to add the new domain to the same Search Console account and on the old domain submit a "request to move" or whatever it's called. It notifies Google that it's the same property moving to the new domain, but they both have to be in the same account.

 

[hekke]

Although a quite late comment, here are my 2 cents.

Agree with @Future State , important that you, before moving content - deindex the content on your current domain to not cause any duplication issues whatsoever. There's the URL Removal tool that temporarily hides URLs of your choice, which can be used to deindex the sites content quickly.

Make sure to do 1:1 redirects, and move over the redirects on the old domain so that it goes:
Old site removed page -> New site
instead of
Old site removed page -> Old site new page -> New site

 

[Ryuzaki]

Agree with @Future State , important that you, before moving content - deindex the content on your current domain to not cause any duplication issues whatsoever. There's the URL Removal tool that temporarily hides URLs of your choice, which can be used to deindex the sites content quickly.

The 301 essentially removes it as soon as Google discovers there's a 301 in place. You'll never have any overlap if you build the new site on a staging server and get the 301's ready to go live on the old site. Then you set the new site live and slap in the 301's in a 5 minute span of each other. Zero issues ever doing this.

Also, the URL Removal doesn't remove pages from the index. It only "hides" them temporarily, but they're still in the actual index and being used for consideration in the algorithms.

I had some issues with this is the past and got to the bottom of it. Had to get these bad pages "really" deindexed. The best way to do it is to make them return a 404 (Missing) or 410 (Gone) and slap them all in a custom sitemap you upload to search console, then wait.