Changing your domain name without losing your positioning requires careful work and monitoring of the process. Web Positioning Salamanca brings you a guide on how to do it so that you don't waste all the time and work to grow your site. Find out about the risks and how to make search engines respect the ranking that the website has achieved.
Risks of doing a web migration.
There are a number of reasons why you might decide to change the domain name of a website. Perhaps the original idea no longer works for you or you are considering a general makeover. In any case, you want this process to have as little impact on you as possible.
Changing domains is one of the types of web migration that we are familiar with. Other examples are moving the site from one content management system to another or from one server to another. Each of these processes must be carried out carefully. In this case, we will focus only on the first one.
As a website owner, you are aware of all the effort you have put into achieving good SEO positioning . You have spent months and years planning SEO strategies to get search engines to index you and gain visibility. But now that you have decided to change your old domain for a new one, you may lose all that work.
The risk of losing organic traffic is one of the main consequences of a poorly executed migration. In other words, those visits that came to your site through search engines will no longer arrive.
Explained more technically, what happens is this. When migrating from one domain to another, you have to map the site, evaluate the indexing status of each page, determine which ones are the most relevant, and redirect each page separately. By skipping this last step, when search engines try to access the original URLs, they won't be able to do so. Instead, they'll encounter a 404 error because these pages no longer exist.
Do you dare to start from scratch again?
The direct consequence of what we explained is that you will lose the traffic that you were getting from search engines. The visits you were getting from sites like social networks or other blogs will also be affected. This means that link building strategies will also go down the drain if you don't monitor the process.
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Of course, in this case, it's not all up to you, because there are links to your site that you don't control. But if you stick to a plan, you'll be able to determine which ones come from relevant sites. This way, you can communicate with webmasters and ask them to modify them by placing the new URL.
The migration will have a bigger impact if you do it all at once. Keep in mind that Google recommends doing it in parts to test if it works. Once you're sure everything is working fine, you can continue with the rest of the site.
By analyzing the site's statistics before and after the change, you will notice how the change drastically affects the number of visits, as well as the authority it had. If this happens, you will lose positions in Google and the rest of the search engines.
So, to carry out this process, affecting the website as little as possible, you need to plan, test and validate results. If you don't do this, you run the risk of starting from scratch, as if it were a new website.
Steps to change the domain name without losing positioning
Search engines like Google recognize the authority and age of your website. If you move it incorrectly to a new URL, you will receive a penalty from them. Not being able to find the content causes users to have a bad experience and you accumulate negative points.
If you are already clear about the risks, learn the steps to change the domain name without losing web positioning .
1. Register the new domain
If you have decided to change your domain, it is because you are convinced that the new name works better for your project. Then the first thing you should do is register the new domain .
In this case, you can change the extension by adding a geolocation signal to it. For example, changing www.mywebsite.com to www.mywebsite.es. Or changing the entire address to a new one.
Among the options for changing the name, you have the possibility of buying an expired domain. If you choose this option, make sure that it is not penalized by any search engine. Check if it has old content and the site statistics.
2. Evaluate and support the entire original site
This first step should not come as a surprise to you. Having a backup of your website is essential to cover your back in case of any problems. If you don't do it yourself, make sure that the hosting provider provides this service. This way, you avoid losing information in the process.
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Once you've made sure you've got everything backed up, do a general assessment of your site. This includes the home page and each of the pages within it, as each has its own statistics associated with it.
Determine which ones have more authority, which ones have higher quality links, etc. Gather all this data to plan the next steps of the project.
3. Transfer some content to the new domain
As we mentioned before, doing the entire transition in one go will have a huge impact on your site, so it's best to do it in parts. Start by transferring the content of a directory or subdomain and apply a 301 redirect .
Doing this will allow you to check that everything is working properly cameroon telegram lead that Google has kept the page indexed. If you detect any errors, you can correct them and prevent them from happening to the rest of the content.
A couple of tips at this point:
Before you start transferring content, you can upload a “under construction page .” This will give Google time to index the new domain. Write something on it that tells search engines and users that the new site will be there.
Start by moving the pages that receive the least traffic and then move on to the rest of your content.