Changed website URL advice on 301 redirect to preserve search results

[19ninety]

So I changed from talkmountain.bike to getoutandmtb.com for various reasons. I didnt think about it at the time, but stumbled upon some info which suggests setting up a 301 redirect in order to preserve search results and ranking.
Wondering how well I was ranking I checked out my google webmaster and analytics pages and got to doing some googling. Turns out one of my topics (on a forum with not very many at all!!) is 4th result on the front page... can hardly believe it, traffic
Now I already have a redirect in place, and it works as far as someone clicks one of the old search results and gets redirected to the new domain, but not to the corresponding topic. I can pretty quickly make a list of the old and new url's so they match up ... but how on earth do I turn that list in to a file I can upload to the old domain ...? I'm truly lost!

 

[Paul B]

If you have simply changed the domain then you can implement a rewrite rule which will automatically forward traffic from the old URLs to the new.

 

[19ninety]

That's way over my head... I wouldnt even know what to search to try and find a how-to

 

[Paul B]

Here's one example: Redirect all traffic from one domain to another

 

[19ninety]

Ok so I tried this:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?talkmountain\.bike [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.getoutandmtb.com/$1 [R=301,NC,L]

however it doesnt seem to link the search result to the new page on the forum?

Have also tried:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?talkmountain\.bike [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.getoutandmtb.com/$1 [R=301,NC,L]
redirect 301 /threads/grand-canyon-al-slx-7-9-29er.5.html http://www.getoutandmtb.comthreads/grand-canyon-al-slx-7-9-29er.5/
redirect 301 /threads/canfield-brothers-yelli-screamy-ano-blue.18.html http://www.getoutandmtb.com/threads/canfield-brothers-yelli-screamy-ano-blue.18/

But still doesnt link up the old and new threads.

 

[19ninety]

OK I think I sorted it now. Deleted everything from the .htaccess and then used the 301 redirect spreadsheet by AndySEO Create 301 Redirects Easily with this FREE spreadsheet and pasted the redirect 301 links for my entire forum in to the .htaccess.

Still had two links I couldn't get to forward properly, checked it using redirect checker Search Engine Friendly Redirect Checker and it said the redirect was working.
Simple solution.... just had to clear my browser history