Moving Website to a Previously Banned / Penalized Domain

The actual moving of a website from one domain to another is about as easy as moving files from one folder on your hard drive to another. It is when you take the search engines into account, i.e. indexation, back links, duplicate content, caching and continuity of search engine results, that the the process takes on a whole life of its own. In this case study of the miami search engine optimization company metapilot.com there is also the issue of the domain having been used for some “spammin’ and jammin’” by the previous owner, changing the complexion of the process from just methodically taking the right steps in the right order at the right time to playing a guessing game with the search engines and ultimately a guessing game with the success of the of the site.

Moving to a domain that’s been banned and/or penalized in Google, Yahoo and MSN and not having detailed knowledge of the history of how the search engines have treated the site is like leaping over a wall without knowing what is on the other side. It leaves open a whole realm of possibilites including never being able to get the ban or penalty removed and never getting the site listed again.

So anyway, here we go:

* 08-05-2006—>

* The .net site map had been deleted so it hadn’t been verifying in Google site maps for some time prior to this. Left it deleted for the time being.

* Each .net page 301?d over to the same page name on the .com domain via .htaccess file.

* Added .com site map in Google Webmaster Tools.

* Requested verification of .com site map and it was verified using the Meta tag verification.

* Now that all 301’s are in place, submitted .net to Google search, Yahoo, MSN