How would I be able to move content from one domain to another?

[UplinkSpyder]

I have a client that wants to migrate some of his site's content to a new domain, not all of the content, just some of it. This is not an address change. He wants to continue actively using the domain name where all this content currently resides, so it's not a matter of notifying search engines of an address change.

The first thing that comes to mind is the use of the canonical tag, but it's not making sense. Any recommendations?

Thanks in advance.

[UplinkSpyder]

Hello Chris, you're absolutely right. It took me a while to conceptualize the process, but referring to projects where I've used 301's to redirect one URL to another helped me realize that I perform the task almost on a daily bases. The one twist that's a first for me is that of redirecting URL's from an active domain to another.

A note to readers that may have a similar question - the 301 redirect is implemented on the donor domain and not on the receiving domain (where content is being move to) explaining why the URL can no longer exist on the donor domain.

With much appreciation, thank you.

[Chris.Menke]

If a page of content is being moved from a URL on domain A to a URL on domain B and will no longer exist on domain A, then the 301 redirect from the first URL to the second would be used to indicate that.  A 301 redirect doesn't have to redirect the whole site, it can be used on a per URL basis.  Here, read through this info on redirects:

http://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection

[UplinkSpyder]

Wow, I think I experiencing an episode of "deer in the headlights". Whok

Thanks for the link, Chris, I'm still baffled. I also think, and please pardon if I'm mistaken, that there's an important factor that's being overlooked (my bad). The original domain (domain A) is going to remain in use curating some of the original content, and a new domain (domain B) is going to be established to curate some of the content migrated from domain A where the content was originally created. Implementing a 301 from one domain to another is not applicable since domain A is going to still be public facing with its own content.

l hope this is starting to make sense.

[MoosaHemani]

Completely agree with Chris!

In your question you mentioned that your client wants to migrate some of his content from one location to another and in order to successfully do that you should use 301redirection so that Google can transfer the juice to new location and visitors can also move to the new location without any hassle.

Canonicals comes in when you need one content on both locations but want to prefer one over other!

[Chris.Menke]

Emmanuel, it sounds like you're just talking about setting up 301 redirects from the URLs of the old locations to the URLs of the new location.  . This can be done when changing content location within a domain or when changing it to another domain. The rel=canonical tag wouldn't be the right solution if you don't actually want the content to exist in both locations.

This Google webmaster tools info might be useful to you:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83105?hl=en