Are you searching for how to migrate your domain SEO friendly way so it doesn’t hurt your rankings? These SEO tips below will help you migrate your site the right way.
Sometimes companies might wish to change the domain name of an existing site because their company is acquired, or they don’t like their domain name, perhaps a change of branding or change of products/services.
Regardless of why you are changing your domain name, you need to be very careful while migrating the whole site to a new domain.
Below are some of the things you should consider when migrating a domain.
- Create a sitemap of your site, building a hierarchical list of all of your site pages (including images, videos etc). For instance, below is the site category structure of eBay
If eBay is transferring the site to a new domain then they should consider the same structure as above in the new site. So, what I mean is, you should record the old URLs, and site structure before killing the old site.
- You should 301 redirect the old pages to the new pages.
- Avoid redirecting all the pages on the old site to the home page of the new site. That is a very common and lazy thing to do and not good for SEO and user experience. In the eBay example, the “Motors” category page on the old site should only be redirected to the “motors” category page on the new site. Remember your old site (with all the old URLs) may still be indexed and ranking in Google. A good experience for a user will be: Say “product xyz” with old URL is ranking in Google > users click on this search result (old url) in Google > users should be redirected to “product xyz” on new site. This will be a good experience for the user rather than the user landing on a home page or some random page on new site.
- The redirects should be 301 redirects as this type of redirect helps you transfer some SEO value from the old page to your new page.
- BACKLINKS: Remember I asked you to maintain a document of your backlinks? If you have it maintained, then in case of migration, you can always go back to those external sites and try changing the destination page URL by replacing the old one with a new URL. (this process of backlinks is explained later in off-page SEO)
NEED HELP?
If you’re planning to migrate your website, we can help. We have experienced web developers and SEO experts to help you with the smooth migration of your website to a new domain.
We can also help you with domain name ideas, guide you with the best way to buy a domain, find the best hosting in Australia for your site, and website design and development.
Contact Us now if you need help – (07) 3076 6921
Vikas Rana
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