How to Change a Domain Name Without Losing Rankings and Traffic

Photo By Rawpixel.com on Freepik

Improper handling of a domain name change can drastically decrease your website traffic and rankings in a short period of time, which directly affects your business revenue. However, if handled correctly, these risks can be minimized or even avoided.

The first thing to understand is that it’s generally better to avoid changing your domain name if possible. Even when a domain change is done properly, the migration can still cause fluctuations or a decline in traffic that lasts for months.

This insight was found on the Google support forum after an SEO professional (and a thread commentator) expressed confusion about why a properly executed migration led to significant ranking and traffic drops over several months.

From this issue, we can conclude that changing your domain name should be avoided unless absolutely necessary. However, there are certain cases where it is unavoidable, such as :

Business Needs

There may be broader business needs that require a domain change. For example, a company might be acquired by another business or undergo a rebranding. In such cases, the original domain name may no longer align with the new business direction.

Internationalization

If you are using a country code top-level domain (ccTLD) such as .co.uk or .fr, and you want to grow your organic search presence beyond those specific countries, a domain change is advisable.

Switching to a generic top-level domain (gTLD) like .com is a smart move if you aim to grow international traffic.

So, if your domain is expected to expand rapidly and there is a strong interest in entering new markets, choosing a .com extension is a strategic step to enable better targeting in international regions.

Consolidating Multiple Domains Into One

It is not uncommon for large organizations to operate multiple domains, whether for different countries or as microsites for specific products.

Migrating several properties to a main domain can be worthwhile. While the risks are relatively low, the long-term benefits include consolidating authority and resources under a single domain.

Moving From HTTP to HTTPS

Back in 2018, Google began marking all HTTP sites as insecure, and HTTPS has been a minor ranking factor since 2014. If you haven’t already, make sure your site uses HTTPS. Google treats this as a site move with a URL change.

Traffic is likely to fluctuate in the short term, but you can follow these steps :

1. Keep Everything Else the Same

Changing your domain name is already complicated, so keep other elements unchanged as much as possible. Maintain the same URL structure to help Google understand the relationship between old and new pages, easing the transition.

Also, keep the same CMS. Preserve the website design and content on each page.

Although basic technical errors like broken internal links or redirects can be fixed during the migration, reserve significant changes—such as redesigns or full content overhauls—outside of the domain name change project.

This approach doesn’t just reduce complexity; it also allows for better identification of what’s working well or going wrong.

If you change the domain name while also rewriting every page and altering the layout, it becomes difficult to pinpoint what led to success or failure.

2. Understand Your Current Site

Run a Screaming Frog crawl on your existing domain to get a complete list of all URLs. Include the XML sitemap in the crawl to ensure nothing is missed.

Match these URLs with traffic and backlink data by integrating with Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Ahrefs via API connection.

This stage involves identifying the top-priority pages on your expiring domain that need to be redirected with a 301 status. Additionally, this data will serve as a valuable benchmark for comparing post-migration performance.

Verify your new domain name in Google Search Console, and if you haven’t already, ensure that your old domain is also verified.

3. Check the Health of the New Domain

Once the new Search Console property is verified and up and running, you will be able to see whether the domain has been subjected to any manual actions. If so, refer to Google’s guidelines on what steps to take and how to submit a reconsideration request.

Using Ahrefs, review the backlink data for the new domain. Currently, Google is quite effective at identifying clearly spammy or toxic inbound links and will usually ignore them automatically.

However, if the domain has been impacted by a manual link-based penalty or contains widespread spammy links, collect all manipulative, spam, and toxic links into a disavow file and submit it to the newly created Search Console property.

4. Redirect Mapping

This step is crucial when changing your domain name without losing rankings or traffic. Using the list of URLs compiled in the previous steps, add a new column for the new URLs and map out your 301 redirects.

This should be used to redirect old pages to their new equivalents with matching content. It’s worth noting that if only the domain name or the protocol (from HTTP to HTTPS) changes while all URL slugs remain the same, individual redirect mapping is not required.

Although you can redirect many old URLs to a single new URL, this should only be done if the new URL is relevant. Avoid redirecting multiple old URLs to less relevant pages, such as the homepage, as this may be considered a soft 404.

This is outlined in Google’s Webmaster Guidelines for moving sites with URL changes, which is definitely worth reading. Some other important points to consider regarding 301 redirects when changing a domain :

• Avoid redirect chains whenever possible.
• A 301 redirect does not result in a loss of PageRank. In this case, it may be worthwhile to ask external publishers who link to your site if they can update their links to your new URL.
• Only redirect URLs that are valuable or if you have an equivalent page to redirect to on the new domain.

5. Ensure Technical Elements Are Correct

There are several technical areas that need to be checked on the new domain, which are often overlooked :

Every URL on the new domain should have a canonical tag pointing to itself. Double-check that the canonical tag on the new domain contains the new domain name and points to HTTPS, not HTTP!

Similarly, ensure a new XML sitemap is created and properly references the new URLs. Also, make sure the sitemap reference in the robots.txt file is updated to the new domain. Update internal links on the new domain so that internal redirects are not necessary.

6. What to Check After Migrating to a New Domain

The first thing to check is the 301 redirect test. You can do this by putting your list of URLs into Screaming Frog’s list mode.

If you don’t have access to Screaming Frog, use a site like https://httpstatus.io/ to check the status of your old URLs and confirm they are redirected as expected.

At this stage, it’s a good idea to manually verify that your high-priority old pages are redirected correctly, and test what happens when you click on some of the search results in Google.

Check whether any rules you’ve implemented that block the new domain from being accessed by Google have been removed—this includes robots.txt exclusions or password protection. Also, ensure that redirect rules apply to both the www and non-www versions of the URLs.

Don’t forget to update links on your social or business profiles such as LinkedIn, Google My Business, and Facebook. This can be helpful and generally less confusing if you keep a list of important citations.

7. Google Search Console Tasks After Switching Domains

There are several steps to take in Google Search Console once your new site is live. These are done to notify Google of the domain change—though this is not required if you’re only switching from HTTP to HTTPS.

Submit the new sitemap to the new domain’s Google Search Console property and request indexing of the homepage. Make sure all settings from the old Search Console property are carried over to the new one. For example, parameter exclusions or disavow files that are still relevant should be applied to the new property.

8. Monitoring the Success of the Migration

After changing your domain name, use Search Console to monitor indexing progress and traffic performance.

On the old domain property, you’ll notice that indexed URLs, impressions, and clicks will gradually decline over time, while on the new domain property, you should see increases along with a list of queries in the Search Performance report.

That concludes the article on How to Change Your Domain Name Without Losing Rankings and Traffic, shared by Mangcoding. We hope this article is useful and provides you with new insights. If you have any constructive feedback or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment or reach out via Mangcoding’s email or social media.

Source : Hallam.agency