How to move (redirect) a website with as little impact on SEs as possible

I have a website which is ranked pretty well by search engines, and I want to move this site to a new domain. Only the right label from the domain name will change (.it > .com).

What's the best way to redirect the old site to the new site, if possible to have minimal impact on search engine ranks?

Should I use .htaccess ?

Options +开发者_C百科FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://newurl.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Or a HTML tag in each old page to redirect it to the new page URL: <meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="5;url=http://newurl.com/newpage/" />

Or PHP:

Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" ); 
Header( "Location: http://newurl.com/newpage/" );

or all of the above :)

What's the difference between the 3, and what's the best way ?

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1) you should use an HTTP 301 redirect from the old urls to the new urls (either via .htaccess or php, it does not really matter, the .htaccess rule is propably more failsafe and faster so you should go for that)

2) go to google webmaster tools -> your old domain -> site configuration -> change of address -> select your (already verified) new domain

3) write all the sites which linked to your old pages and tell them to please change the link (yeah, i know that this is not going to happen, but you asked for the best way...) otherwise you will have to keep the old domain running for ever and ever and ever....

about meta redirect: that's a javascript redirect and google does not recommend it. if you are looking for an in HTML solution, use the canonical tag http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139394 (don't listen to the video, it's outdated, canonical work cross domain now, too) but hey with the HTTP 301 redirect you will not need it.

anyway, you will probably see a slump (minus 20% to minus 30% are quite common) of google referred for three weeks anyway, don't panic. if you did everything right you will regain the traffic after that period.

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Best way is htaccess as when request goes to server it first check with htaccess and then php and then html

So to reduce less redirecting time, its better to go with .htaccess :)

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sign up for www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ there is a section there that will help you, not only with advice but doing the switch for google bot iirc

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The 1st and 3rd are identical and the best way to do it. They give a 301 redirect which most search-engines will honor and they will never (okay, rarely) try to hit the old site.

The 2nd will only redirect browsers and search-engines that specifically look for that type of redirect. More likely, search-engines will see it as a "link" from your first page an index both.