Google ran a SEO quiz using Google Docs a few weeks back and the answers are now online. Developers building a public-facing website can benefit from learning tricks of the SEO trade as it can significantly boost traffic to their site. This area also needs continual learning as new things emerge frequently.
One of the question there was about how to move a site to a new domain name while retaining it's original search engine ratings. The preferred way is to permanently redirect traffic using a HTTP 301 (permanent) redirect as this will inform search engines to update their index with the resource’s new location. If the change is going to be short term such as a special page that is seasonal, a 302 (temporary) redirect would be a better choice.
I never had a chance to try this out but implementing this in IIS 7 or older versions is pretty easy. This can also be done programmatically -
private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently";
Response.AddHeader("Location","http://www.new-domain.com");
}
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