This guide helps you avoid the serious damage that can occur to your website rankings & traffic by improperly moving your content to a new domain name.
Step 1: Traffic Loss
Be prepared for a dip in your overall traffic. It is going to happen! However, if you do everything right you can keep the pain to a minimum. Usually your traffic will dip for 1 week to 1 month depending on the size of your site. If the risk of temporarily losing traffic does not reward the benefit of moving to a new domain name, stop right here.
Tip: Because you know your traffic will dip it is a great idea to open or increase budget on a PPC campaign. Target your top performing organic keywords and use exact keyword matches so you don’t pay for non converting clicks.
Step 2: 301 Redirects
301 redirect your old domain to your new domain. Do not use a 302 redirect. 301 tells the search engines that this is a permanent move while 302 would mean the move is only temporary. You need to 301 redirect each page to its corresponding page on the new domain. Do not simply redirect all pages to the new homepage. The only time you should redirect to your homepage is if no other content on the new site is a good match.
When moving a large site you may want to move one section to test that you are doing it correctly before messing up the entire site only to find out too late that you missed a step!
Tip: Google recommends that you keep the 301 redirects up for at least 180 days. I would highly suggest you simply keep them live forever. You can remove your images, videos, etc.. off the server but keep the 301′s live.
Tip: You should also create custom 404 pages that suggest the user visit your new site.
Tip: In Google Webmaster Central go to Site Configuration > Change of Address – It will tell you to add and verify your new domain; once completed you can alert Google of your domain change.
Step 3: Update Sitemaps
In your webmaster accounts resend a copy of your OLD sitemap to Google, Bing & Yahoo (For Yahoo use the Site Explorer Tool). The submission pages are within Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Center. The search engines will crawl your old urls and be notified of your move much quicker than waiting to be indexed again.
After that is done, create and submit a sitemap for your new domain on its webmaster accounts as well.
Tip: Use sites like http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ if you do not already have an xml sitemap created.
Step 4: Update Your Links
Make sure that all your internal links were actually updated to the new domain. This can be more of a pain if you used absolute instead of relative file paths. However, most editing tools like Dreamweaver have a find and replace function for mass edits.
Once your internal links are in order start updating external links that are pointing to your old domain. You are never going to get everyone to switch but if you prepare a nice stock email you will be surprised at how many will update their link to your new domain.
Use Yahoo’s Site Explorer & Google Webmaster tool’s “Links To Your Site” section to find external sites that link to you. Both sites allow you to export the data to excel which is very handy.
Also, do not forget your paid directory links. Make sure your Yahoo Directory and Best Of The Web Directory links are pointing to your new domain.
Tip: Your analytics package is also a great source to find external links. Export a list of the top 100 (or more) sites sending traffic to your site and reach out to them.
Tip: Free tools like ISS Toolkit (Super Sweet) and the Xenu’s Link Sleuth should be used to make sure there are no broken links or images on your site and a whole host of other issues that may have happened in your move.
Step 5: Monitor
Be sure to monitor your webmaster accounts for search engine crawl errors and correct any issues you see immediately.
Step 6: Link Building
You really would be smart to start a link building campaign to coincide with your new domain launch. At the very least you should do the following as well as updating as many old links as possible in step 5.
Write and Distribute an Article – (low cost) easily net 20 to 40 links to your new domain.
Use Social Bookmarking – (Free)- Google some “Do Follow” bookmarking lists and add your site.
Submit a Press Release – Use PR Web or another distribution service. Go with the basic package all you really care about are the links.
Use Web 2.0: Create or update your blog on WordPress.org, Squidoo, Hubpages…etc. to include a link to your new site.
These simple and low cost techniques should easily net you 60 to 80 new links to your site and that is being conservative. Link Building and SEO Experts can of course offer you a more robust and custom made campaign.
Tip: Focus a good portion of your new links to internal pages. Search engines will have no problem with your homepage but can always use a good reason to dive deeper into your site.
Step 7: Pat Yourself On The Back!
By doing the steps above you will have made moving to a new domain name a piece of cake.
If you have any questions about a step or anything that was not covered please post in the comments bellow. I hope this helps save you from some of the domain change horror stories I have heard over the years.
Step 1: Traffic Loss
Be prepared for a dip in your overall traffic. It is going to happen! However, if you do everything right you can keep the pain to a minimum. Usually your traffic will dip for 1 week to 1 month depending on the size of your site. If the risk of temporarily losing traffic does not reward the benefit of moving to a new domain name, stop right here.
Tip: Because you know your traffic will dip it is a great idea to open or increase budget on a PPC campaign. Target your top performing organic keywords and use exact keyword matches so you don’t pay for non converting clicks.
Step 2: 301 Redirects
301 redirect your old domain to your new domain. Do not use a 302 redirect. 301 tells the search engines that this is a permanent move while 302 would mean the move is only temporary. You need to 301 redirect each page to its corresponding page on the new domain. Do not simply redirect all pages to the new homepage. The only time you should redirect to your homepage is if no other content on the new site is a good match.
When moving a large site you may want to move one section to test that you are doing it correctly before messing up the entire site only to find out too late that you missed a step!
Tip: Google recommends that you keep the 301 redirects up for at least 180 days. I would highly suggest you simply keep them live forever. You can remove your images, videos, etc.. off the server but keep the 301′s live.
Tip: You should also create custom 404 pages that suggest the user visit your new site.
Tip: In Google Webmaster Central go to Site Configuration > Change of Address – It will tell you to add and verify your new domain; once completed you can alert Google of your domain change.
Step 3: Update Sitemaps
In your webmaster accounts resend a copy of your OLD sitemap to Google, Bing & Yahoo (For Yahoo use the Site Explorer Tool). The submission pages are within Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Center. The search engines will crawl your old urls and be notified of your move much quicker than waiting to be indexed again.
After that is done, create and submit a sitemap for your new domain on its webmaster accounts as well.
Tip: Use sites like http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ if you do not already have an xml sitemap created.
Step 4: Update Your Links
Make sure that all your internal links were actually updated to the new domain. This can be more of a pain if you used absolute instead of relative file paths. However, most editing tools like Dreamweaver have a find and replace function for mass edits.
Once your internal links are in order start updating external links that are pointing to your old domain. You are never going to get everyone to switch but if you prepare a nice stock email you will be surprised at how many will update their link to your new domain.
Use Yahoo’s Site Explorer & Google Webmaster tool’s “Links To Your Site” section to find external sites that link to you. Both sites allow you to export the data to excel which is very handy.
Also, do not forget your paid directory links. Make sure your Yahoo Directory and Best Of The Web Directory links are pointing to your new domain.
Tip: Your analytics package is also a great source to find external links. Export a list of the top 100 (or more) sites sending traffic to your site and reach out to them.
Tip: Free tools like ISS Toolkit (Super Sweet) and the Xenu’s Link Sleuth should be used to make sure there are no broken links or images on your site and a whole host of other issues that may have happened in your move.
Step 5: Monitor
Be sure to monitor your webmaster accounts for search engine crawl errors and correct any issues you see immediately.
Step 6: Link Building
You really would be smart to start a link building campaign to coincide with your new domain launch. At the very least you should do the following as well as updating as many old links as possible in step 5.
Write and Distribute an Article – (low cost) easily net 20 to 40 links to your new domain.
Use Social Bookmarking – (Free)- Google some “Do Follow” bookmarking lists and add your site.
Submit a Press Release – Use PR Web or another distribution service. Go with the basic package all you really care about are the links.
Use Web 2.0: Create or update your blog on WordPress.org, Squidoo, Hubpages…etc. to include a link to your new site.
These simple and low cost techniques should easily net you 60 to 80 new links to your site and that is being conservative. Link Building and SEO Experts can of course offer you a more robust and custom made campaign.
Tip: Focus a good portion of your new links to internal pages. Search engines will have no problem with your homepage but can always use a good reason to dive deeper into your site.
Step 7: Pat Yourself On The Back!
By doing the steps above you will have made moving to a new domain name a piece of cake.
If you have any questions about a step or anything that was not covered please post in the comments bellow. I hope this helps save you from some of the domain change horror stories I have heard over the years.
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