How do I change my URL to a new one and keep all my links

Hi there,

One possibility is to automatically redirect traffic from your old domain name. That means that when people follow a link to it they will automatically be taken to the original content but on the new site. There are two ways that you can do that, either coming up with a message saying 'this site has moved to newaddress.com' with an redirect within 5 seconds, or an immediate redirect resulting in their being transferred immediately without knowing it unless they look in the address bar.

It's quite easy to set up web forwarding using whatever service holds the original domain name. The only downside is that you will need to keep the old domain in order to forward traffic from it, at least for a while until the new address is more recognised.

The articles that are pointing at it you can't do a lot about unfortunately, short of editing every article that you've ever submitted to point at the new address (not even sure if that's possible with some article directories?). So a redirect is probably the best plan.

Hope that helps,

Bex

The official advice from Google:

Moving your site - Webmasters/Site owners Help

Use the 301 they mention and your visitors will hardly notice and link benefit is retained.

Use the 301 redirect, because Google will see your new website like a copy of your old, and will penalize your new domain for taking content from other websites.

Hi Bex,

Thank you so much for your answer. It seems like it will not be too hard.
Have I got this right:
So I am going to buy a new domain name and then get that all set up.
Then get Godaddy to redirect from the old to the new.

I will not worry about the articles since they will be redirected

Then I guess I have to just wait for google to see my new site and I will start promoting it. After awhile I could get rid of the first site.
Again thank you and please correct me if I am wrong.
Some times I seem to worry about something and then it is easier than I thought.
Thanks Karen

If the articles you mentioned are yours, I would start changing the links in them to your new URL, once you have it set up. Otherwise, when you take down your existing site, the links will no longer work.