WP Guru's,
I opened a thread last week and received some very helpful replies in it.. but I feel that I did a poor job describing the issue and what I was after so I just want to make sure to clarify.. and again for all those whom answered I am greatly appreciative of your time and expertise.
I have just updated a friends site to wordpress. He was doubtful so we used a different domain so he could see the final product before agreeing to use it. His old domain is aged and ranks well (
www.hellohello.com), it's a non wordpress site hosted on yahoo.
So I then built him a new Wordpress site on (
www.hello-hello.com) with a more "wordpress friendly" hosting, Host Gator. Yahoo only allows an old out-dated version of WP in their weirdo package deal.
The new Wordpress site with a hyphen is already showing some decent rankings. So here is my question:
What is the most simple and easy way to essentially "switch" the domains. He would like his old domain (non wordpress site with different hosting) on the new Wordpress site (better hosting).
Is there a way to do this without transferring the site completely? I realize there is the Site Duplicator wordpress plugin.. but again we want to use the new wp friendly hosting and not his old hosting.. it wouldn't make sense to go install wordpress on his old hosting and transfer the site to them because they use an out-dated version of Wordpress. (some weirdo package deal with yahoo and the service is only configured to use like wordpress 2.8 or something, yes it's strange).
We also want to use the old domain because it's 14 years old. He realizes we might lose some rankings for a bit and that's ok. But I'm really looking for a simple fool-proof solution to get his old domain over to the new setup. If it were only possible to essentially "switch" the domains without any site transfers that would be ideal.
I know we could do a domain forward from hellohello.com to hello-hello.com but what I worry about is how that will effect not only the old domains seo, but the new site's promising seo (he's already seen returns). The last thing I would want is for somehow for Google to think something weird is going on with the domain forward and the new domain get penalized for whatever reason.
His backlinks are also aligned only on the old domain. I realize he is going to take a SEO hit simply because we are getting rid of the old site and it's exact content and pages, etc. But I'm confident with the aged domain and backlinks, his new wordpress site would be just fine in the long run.
Question is how do I use his old domain on the new site?
Any help would be SERIOUSLY appreciated from your WP fellows. I hit Fris up through Oatmeal and am awaiting a response, but any helpful info it all would still be very welcome indeed.