When I change domains, how long should I leave the redirects in place?

If I get a new domain and want to 301 redirect www.old-domain.com to www.new-domain.com, how long do I have to keep the redirect up before I can start using the old domain for something else? Just until it has been crawled once? Jacob, Denmark

Russian subtitles provided by Mike Shakin.

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Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• google
• seo
• 301

[SubZeroo2011]

I Like The Dub-Dub-Dub Part :)

Thank You

[edfishboy]

haha.. is that the fastest someone has ever said dub-dub-dub?

[jasgraham21]

Dub-Dub-Dub!! :)

[adieulot]

Did you train yourself for the dub-dub-dub before recording this video?

[agapitoflores001]

He is really very entertaining. I find him funny sometimes. Nice "dub-dub-dub"..LOL..

[amzeee1]

Yeah dub dub dub is interesting way :)

[vesogry]

Now, I lost all my positions in google. I made 301 redirect and every position vanished. I've read on forum that positions can come back after 6 (sic!) months . Don't redirect if you don't have to. There also might be a problem, bacause I redirected from mysite.pl to mysite.eu(slash)pl. It really sucks, because this was my main client source and now it's very difficult to make enough profit.

[vesogry]

Hello Matt

I have a problem. I made 301 redirect from mydomain.pl to mydomain.eu. After a while all my traffic moved from pl to eu. I have a few high ranked keywords, some of them on first position, but yesterday, I can find only 3 keywords, on positions 70, 80. I don't use black SEO. Is this permanent, have my website got filter and how i can check this.

[laugedyret]

It's very important that you never give up the old domain. Because the you're able to 301 all incoming link from the old domain to the new domain. If there are any.

And maybe someone bookmarked the old domain.

So I would keep the 301 for years and look into my Analytics for old 301's from the old domain, before I skip the old domain or use it for something else.

:-)

[jeffyablon]

I have to agree with Porretz and ianvisits; Search Engine "Awareness" isn't the whole story; any existing link juice you have has be be maintain/curated.

That said: assuming you maintain ownership of the old domain and redirect things on a page-level rather than a site level, the question doesn't matter; a correctly-formatted 301 will pass the juice where you want it/it belongs

[Porretz]

As ianvistt said..

You have to always leave redirect 301, cause if u got link popularity to the old domain and you remove the redirect, you will loose all the popularity you were passing with 301.