I’m in the process of rebranding my company and I’m a little unsure how to approach our current website and how it will work alongside my new domain, and so I’m here looking for some advice! I have a plan and know enough to get it done (eventually), but I don’t know enough to really know the implications of what I’m doing (in terms of SEO for one), and I’m likely to get it wrong before I get it right and I want to avoid any unnecessary expense and downtime! I’m mostly just here for moral support I think. Here’s my situation and my current plan:
I have an existing website, let’s call it ACMEbananas.com. We sell bananas. We’re now diversifying into everything fruit related and so our new domain will be ACMEfruit.com. Exciting stuff.
Ultimately, I want one website for everything. I will update my existing site to reflect the new brand/name (ACMEfruit). I want to keep all my existing content from ACMEbananas.com on one half of the site and I also want all the new ACMEfruit content added in as a new second half. I can do this no problem.
Obviously I want the new domain (ACMEfruit.com) to point towards my existing updated site and for the forseeable future I’d also like the old domain (ACMEbananas.com) to point there too. This is what I’m less sure about.
So my questions are:
In terms of implications I’ve not considered, is this the best way to approach it?
Would I change the DNS on the domains so that the new URL points towards my existing site, and set up a 301 redirect on the old one? This is what I’m unsure about as I’m not really getting a new site, rather I’m getting a new domain? I think a 301 redirect requires some sort of hosted space or can it be done with just a domain?
Thanks in advance for any pointers.
J