Proper 301 redirect for sites

I have a bit of a complex question. I am moving sites from http://www.hikingsanfr开发者_如何学Pythonancisco.com to http://www.comehike.com

The directory structures will not be the same throughout both sites. What are some of the best practice things I can do in order to retain most of my existing SEO strength in both the general domain and individual pages for searches related to the other pages?

Thank you, Alex

If most of the URLs are staying the same and just the domain is changing, you could create an .htaccess file in the root folder at the old site with the following:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.comehike.com/$1 [R=301,L]

This will make hikingsanfrancisco.com/some-page go to comehike.com/some-page.

Otherwise in that same htaccess file you could add a line for each redirect. So if hikingsanfrancisco.com/big-hikes is now going to comehike.com/even-bigger-hikes the redirect would look like:

Redirect 301 /big-hikes http://www.comehike.com/even-bigger-hikes

That 301 tells Google to now consider the new URL correct.

To redirect the whole site no matter what to the new URL you could use this:

Redirect 301 / http://www.comehike.com/

A 301 Redirect, page by page, is the best option (If you can use regular expressions is easier). Redirect the old page to a page in the new site with similar content. Use the change of address tool in Google Webmasters tools.

Try to contact some of yours referrals to change the links that target your site.