Moving from 2.50 to 2.80 on new domain clean build -301 redirects

I am currently running live on 2.50 but preparing to host v2.80 on a new domain. A clean build is needed (for a number of reasons) however I currently have top rankings for my keywords from age and individual backlinks to my specific product pages.

My understanding is that I would need a 301 redirect on each indexed product page redirecting to the new site product page with each site running side by side until the new site has been fully indexed by Google.

Is there anyway I can do this or does anyone have alternative suggestions how to preserve the ranking.

Have you considered implementing this from your domain control panel? You should find an option to do a 301 path forwarding. Or you can use IIS rewrite rules to achieve the same results. Personally, I wouldn't do it from the application level.

My domain control panel doesn't seem to do this but I do have access to IIS manager for the site but not sure how to do it. I can see the site wide redirect but don't know how to do a URL to URL mapping.

Take a look at this article. The author is solving the same problem as yours using IIS URL Rewrite extension.

http://www.make-awesome.com/2010/03/301-redirects-with-iis7-rewrite-module/

Hope this helps.

r_omar wrote:

Thanks for that. I found the same article earlier and have already installed the plugin which looks like it is exactly what I need and is available for free from the web install gallery and can be installed whilst in IIS.

I am going to be testing it this weekend on my development domains. You create what are called rewrite maps with one to one mappings. I will post back after the weekend if it does what I expect.