Changing site url

Hi folks,

I have a site which is reasonably well established in search engines (PR4),
but which has a long (non-keyword) awkward url. Lets call it www.a-b.com.

I've now been able to register www.ab.com and I'd like to set this up as the
primary site domain, so it will come up in SEs and I can use it in
advertising. I was thinking of parking www.ab.com on top of www.a-b.com and
then setting up permanent redirects (via htaccess) for all requests to
www.a-b.com/pagehere to go to www.ab.com/pagehere

1 Is this the best way to achieve this?
2.Will my rankings be affected as all inbound links will still be
www.a-b.com (until I get these to be changed to www.ab.com on sites) ?

Any advice or suggestions welcome

Ta.

"Sam" <sammhols (AT) bigfoot (DOT) com> wrote

Hi folks,

I have a site which is reasonably well established in search engines
(PR4),
but which has a long (non-keyword) awkward url. Lets call it www.a-b.com.

I've now been able to register www.ab.com and I'd like to set this up as
the
primary site domain, so it will come up in SEs and I can use it in
advertising. I was thinking of parking www.ab.com on top of www.a-b.com
and
then setting up permanent redirects (via htaccess) for all requests to
www.a-b.com/pagehere to go to www.ab.com/pagehere

1 Is this the best way to achieve this?
2.Will my rankings be affected as all inbound links will still be
www.a-b.com (until I get these to be changed to www.ab.com on sites) ?

Any advice or suggestions welcome

Ta.

FWIW when I asked google about re-directs they said a 301 redirect is the
preferred method.

The honest truth is, you are in for a real mess, but in the long run
it will be well worth it, because an easy to spell, easy to remember
domain name is a must, if you want to promote your site.

If you are in DMOZ, and if the category you are in is edited by
someone who only edits a few small categories, and pays a lot of
attention, you could get the DMOZ listing changed this week, but then
it would take many months for the other directories (such as the
Google Directory) to take that update from DMOZ, which means that from
now until Christmas, you will have most directory links pointing at
the old site.

It could get worse - you could be in a DMOZ category where the editor
is over worked and has many categories to watch, and can't make the
change for months, in which case the directories that update from DMOZ
will be pointing to your old site until mid 2005.

Also keep in mind that many DMOZ editors won't change your URL unless
they see the 301, to assure that it is a permanent redirect.

Having said all this, I would still do it. The long term value of an
easy to remember URL is well worth the pain of migration. If anyone
knows a way to do this faster, or easier, I would love to hear it.