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Owning a personal website is essential for any individual or business aiming to build their brand and expand their business operations. To create a website, you first need to register a domain and acquire hosting. Choosing the right domain name helps customers distinguish your website from the millions of others online.
How to Transfer an Old Domain to a New One Without Losing Search Ranking
However, in reality, many individuals have owned websites for a long time but feel they no longer align with market trends and wish to change domains. In this case, the question that puzzles many is how to change an old domain to a new one while still maintaining SEO results?
The following Mytour article will guide you through 7 steps to change domains without losing SEO for your blog/website. Let's find out!
How to Change Domain without Impacting SEO Results
1. Check the entire website
The first step to transferring an old domain to a new one without losing website traffic is to conduct a website inventory. This involves creating a specific list of active web pages on your site.
This step is particularly crucial because you'll need to set up 301 redirects afterward. You'll use them to transfer all website traffic from the old URL to the new one. Of course, this will happen after your new website is up and running.
However, not everyone can accomplish this unless you're extremely diligent. Many will feel discouraged because there are thousands of web pages involved.
The question now is how do you inventory the website? Clearly, this is a complex process that takes up a considerable amount of time. Fortunately, you can use SEO data collection tools to expedite the process, such as SEO Data Scraper or Screaming Frog. They'll assist in inventorying your web pages.
- Get the latest version of Screaming Frog here
These tools will also help list all meta descriptions, title tags, keywords, and other details you'll need later for SEO. It can be said that this is the most strenuous part of the entire process.
2. Establish a Stronger Brand for the Holding Page
Although this is a simpler step, you still need to pay attention to some important details.
You may want search engines, especially Google, to index the homepage of your new website immediately. That's one of the primary reasons why you need to create a holding page (a place to keep all existing directory links) for your new website. It's a rule of thumb and common practice when transferring domains for a website.
The value of holding pages has slightly diminished, but it's still a good idea, as it lets others know that you've acquired a new domain and are building a new website. Holding pages aren't as crucial as before because 301 redirects have the ability to pass along the same page scope with direct links.
3. Transfer Data from Old Domain to New Domain
Once you have the holding page set up, you can begin transferring content from the old server to the new one. This process will take a few hours, and it's advisable to leave a notice on the old website. Typically, all content will be swiftly moved unless your website is overly large.
After successfully transferring all content, the next step is to check for any broken links. This will be one of the most important tasks you need to do before launching the new website.
If done manually, checking all links can be quite time-consuming, but you can also use effective support tools, such as Link Sleuth by Xenu.
Explore how to change domains without altering SEO results.
4. Transfer Old Domain to New Domain
After double-checking all links, ensure that all page titles and descriptions are uploaded and running smoothly.
You may have some unchecked pages, but that's not a significant issue. What's important is that you have most of the links working. You can still find and fix broken links later. If everything is relatively stable, you can proceed with transferring the old domain to the new one.
5. Declare New Domain on Webmaster Tools
The next step you need to take is to verify the new domain on Webmaster Tools. First, you need to add the new domain and then proceed with verification.
There are plenty of different options for you to accomplish this task, such as uploading an HTML file, verifying the new website through your Google Analytics account, or adding a meta tag to your website's homepage.
- If you choose to verify the website using Google Analytics, you can download Google Analytics latest version here
6. Utilize 301 Redirects
301 redirect is the most SEO-friendly method to redirect URLs from the old domain to the new one. Currently, it's also the standard for all search engine optimization methods. There are several ways to implement 301 redirects, and the choice will depend on the software you're using.
Guide on Using Redirect 301 to Transfer Data from Old Domain to New Domain
Below are the methods you can employ with 301 redirects:
+ ASP redirect
+ ASP .net redirect
+ PHP redirect
+ htaccess 301 redirect
+ Windows IIS redirect
+ ColdFusion redirect
+ config redirect
301 redirect can also be used when you change the filenames of certain web pages. Once again, there are many different ways to do this. For instance, if you're using the .htaccess file to perform 301 redirect, you'll need to add the following lines to that file:
You'll need to create an .htaccess file if it's not already available. You just need a simple text editor to do this. Then, you'll need to upload that file to the root directory of your old website.
Of course, you'll use different lines of code if using PHP or ASP.
In case you encounter some troubles while setting up
If you encounter any difficulties during setup
When implementing a 301 redirect, you'll need to contact your web hosting provider's technical support for more information.
A note for you is that using a 301 redirect to move from an old domain to a new one doesn't impact your website's ranking. This principle also holds true for 302 redirects.
The next question is: How long does it take for Google to move your site? This also means how long do you need to keep the 301 redirect? Unfortunately, there's no official answer to this issue. However, Google confirms that the process may take a relatively long time.
Specifically, the domain transition process takes time for the period before Google completely forgets about your old website and URL. Then, it will automatically redirect all traffic to the new site.
Another factor that many people wonder about is whether there is a limit to the number of 301 redirects. If you have more than 1,000 web pages and you need to set up 301 redirects for each of those pages, that's the limit. However, if you have redirect chains, you can use from 1 to 3 redirects per chain.
7. Notify Google
The final step in domain migration is to notify Google about your new website or URL. You'll need to submit an XML sitemap to help Google's web crawler understand the structure of your new website.
By following the 7 steps outlined by Mytour to change your domain, you can transfer all data from the old domain to the new one without worrying about your position in Google's keyword ranking.
If you're eager to delve into the realm of SEO and uncover intriguing insights about keyword analysis, consider exploring Mytour's article on 9 best practices for keyword utilization. This piece offers a plethora of tips and tricks to effectively harness SEO keywords, facilitating rapid and enduring ascension to the top ranks.
