At times, it’s mandatory to shift your website to a completely new domain. This may affect your brand name as sometimes changing the website domain may lead to something that can be changed forever. Yes, but it’s still possible to transfer your site to a completely new name and this may affect your rankings.
Steps used to alter domain without affecting the SEO:
- User friendly domain is now available: If your website is still struggling with that same old .net or .biz domains and accidentally you find the domain with .com, then you may feel the urge to grab it and transfer your current website into the domain name..com domains can be easily made available and this domain can also make it easy for customers to remember the sites. This may increase satisfaction level thus helping your business to get more loyal customers.
- Domain might be changed due to change in business name: This is somewhat difficult but it is actually a perfect way to maintain branding instead of changing it frequently.
- Consolidate multiple domains in a year: If you have one or more websites then it’s necessary to deliver same content to the audience. It’s sometimes even advisable to combine several domains and this is one of the well known techniques that is widely used to bring all websites under one roof.
So, before actually starting your domain transfer for whatsoever reason, don’t forget to do these things:
- Have a complete back up of your site: If the website back up is not available then shifting to a completely new domain can be a big problem. So, in order to save wastage of time and resources and making yourself tension free, it’s necessary to have a back up to avoid a complete mess.If your site is based on WordPress then you can use few WordPress Plugins like BackUp WordPress or Backup Buddy. This will make migration easy for you.
- Clean up your new domain: If the domain that you are switching to is previously registered then make sure that it is free from errors and penalties. You can do so by checking your domain in Google Webmaster Tools and then check the manual page.If there’s any action needed then before starting the migration, it’s necessary to do required changes and then submit a reconsideration request. Once the request is approved then you are free to transfer your entire website content to a completely new domain.
- Shifting the content to New Domain: According to some of the SEO experts, only a small portion of the content if transferred to new domain will serve the purpose as this will let you know the impact on your rankings. This process can be time consuming but still it is useful.
- Permanent Redirect: Once the content is transferred now is the time to make visitors aware that your website is shifted from one domain to another and for this make sure you use 301 redirect for pages from old domain to the new one so that Google can easily find your content.On the other hand, if content transferring is to be done manually then it’s necessary to have the proper content management system. The 301 redirects should be set up to .htaccess file. This shows that you have permanently shifted your content to the completely new domain.Proper setup of 301 redirect is the key to get good search rankings.
Wind up:
So, next time if you wish to shift your website from one domain to another then make sure to keep in mind the above mentioned things so as to fulfill the task successfully. For more guidance about SEO related to website migration, get in touch with SEO Company in Adelaide, Platinum SEO.