Hello all, new here, great site!

Need a bit of advice.

I have a forum that is on a domain that has forum in the URL.

I'm looking to move the site to a more content related normal site, reviews, how-tos, blog etc and have the forum as just part of it.

Thus I want to change the domain to something more appropriate.

How can I do this without losing my current rankings, domain age factor and backlinks etc.

Thanks.

Dave.

Google places an enormous influence on keywords in the domain, so look for a domain that has the most popular keywords related to your site.

Domain keywords are very often even more important than high quality backlinks in the mind of Google.

The short answer is you can't. You can put 301 redirects in all the right places, etc etc, but changing domains sucks and should be avoided whenever possible.

Originally Posted by htmlmaster

Domain keywords are very often even more important than high quality backlinks in the mind of Google.

And this is not true. Keywords in your domain are helpful, but nothing trumps quality backlinks.

Thanks, going to stick as just a forum and same domain as I'm just starting to see nice traffic and don't fancy losing it. :turned:

If you have another domain name in mind, buy it and forward the traffic. Better than someone else buying it and developing it.

Originally Posted by handsome rob

The short answer is you can't. You can put 301 redirects in all the right places, etc etc, but changing domains sucks and should be avoided whenever possible.

Definitely concur with Rob on that as changing your domain name is just like changing your own name and changing its complete identity. It would be a whole new site for the search engine and the evaluation process according to its algorithms will start all over again.

Is there anything you can use your existing domain for? why not just build the community features off the new domain and keep the forums on the existing domain - just integrate the sites nice and neatly.