Need advice on "swapping two sites"

[decipher]

Hi, new to the site, reconize a few members from seochat. :)

I'll try to make this as short as possible. I have two domains.

One has the main keyword we are shooting for in the domain and a listing in dmoz (let's call this keyworddomain.com). This domain is mainly html files and not ranking well for anything. The other domain does not have a dmoz listing or keyword in domain and is badly scripted, old technology (let's call this one kwdomain.com). This one is ranking even worse!

I wrote a custom database, php script to replace the older, badly scripted site. Nicely optimized, nice for the user too.

Here is what I want to do.

I want to move the files on keyworddomain.com to the other domain, kwdomain.com. Then, I want to put the new script on keyworddomain.com because it will be much easier to optimize for.

Do you think Google will drop the domain if I do this? I was concerned about a duplicate sites penalty, but, the files won't actually be on both domains, they will be moved to just one. I won't be 301 redirecting every single page due to time constraints (since it's all single files, ughhh). I might redirect the main pages on the site however, just to play it safe.

What do you think? Any advice is extremely appreciated!

Take care, Nick

[rustybrick]

If this is a long term strategy, then I would go with this plan. Just expect it to take some time to rank well.

[decipher]

Rustybrick, thank you very much for the reply. I was weary about this strategy because I can't find any documentation or test cases online.

I told my client that it will take a while to start ranking, so, no worries there. It's definitely a long term strategy. Cheers!

[rustybrick]

301s would be beneficial, but that is your call.

[decipher]

It's a state / city based site, so, I'm definitely going to 301 redirect the state pages (at least). Just realizing now that the older html based site is going to need links updated to the new domain, so, I might be able to convince them to add 301s for each page too while updating the old site. Thanks again Rustybrick.

[Seekz]

Hello

If the structure of the site is not going to change then you can do it with a couple of lines of code. Add this to the end of your httpd.conf file on your old site:

ErrorDocument 404 /redirect.php

Then put this PHP code into a file called redirect.php in to the document root of the old site:

<?php
$location = 'http://www.yournewdomain.com' . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
header("Location: $location", true, 302);
# Or use 301 for permanent redirect.
?>

Then delete all the files off your old site. When a browser goes to a page it will redirect it to the same page on the new domain.

[SEOJaimie]

Make _SURE_ you change the 302 to a 301 there, unless you're a masochist.