How to change domain name without impacting SEO?

Sometimes domain name change is required due to some uncertain circumstances. Changing a domain name is a very easy task if you have a new website. But when it comes to change the domain name of a valuable website. Valuable in the sense

• Websites having High DA and PA
• The website has a large number of audience
• Websites whose referring domain and backlinks count is awesome
• Websites which have a high brand value

In all the cases, I have listed above changing a domain will be a very junky task. It requires a lot of efforts to get the things on the track again.

{Read:- 5 Best tips to Grow Your SEO Audience 2021 }

How to change domain name?

Here I have mentioned the steps which you can follow if you want a domain change. Let’s dive into it.

1. Decide and buy the required domain

This step is pretty straight forward. If you want to switch your domain, you should buy that domain first.

{Read:- Googlebot SEO Benefits 2021 }

2. Do a complete analysis of content and search engine ranking

This is an important step if your site is old. With the help of tools like Ahref and Semrush You can find out a lot of important information about your website.

3. Create  a complete backup of your website

This is a very important step. You don’t even dare to ignore it. Because by chance if you do any mistake you will miss your data. it is not always missing data.

Most of the times, It is missing the brand values. It is missing the regular traffic values and it is increasing the 404 page not found error.

{Read:- What to do for Fast Google Indexing 2021 }

In my case it is very easy to take a backup. Most of the hosting providers provide better option to take a backup or schedule a backup.

I am using GoDaddy and my backup is scheduled for everyday. it can be weekly or once in a month.

If your hosting provider doesn’t provide a better backup option then I will recommend you to use these plugins for backup.

1. VaultPress
2. UpdraftPlus
3. ManageWP backup
4. BackupBuddy
5. All in one WP Migration

4. Setting up proper 301 redirection using .htaccess file

This is very crucial step. Traffics after changing the domain is totally dependent on this step only.

{Read:- SEO Benefits of Pingback in WordPress }

So, give time and learn how to setup proper 301 redirection. If you can’t do it on your own hire somebody to do that for you.

If you do this step properly then old web page will be redirected to the new page automatically and you will not lose the traffic. Here is an example –

Create a 301 redirect for all http requests that are going to the old domain.

Example 1 – Redirect from olddomain.com to www.newdomain.com:

Example 2 – Redirect from olddomain.com to newdomain.com:

This is just an example, you can also do the 301 redirection using Yoast SEO if you are using. This is good for post pages and media files.

For main domain you can set it up in domain forward setting under your hosting provider dashboard. You can do it also with the help of C-Panel redirection.

{Read:- HTTP to HTTPS redirection using .htaccess file }

5. Tell Google that you moved now

Google is providing change of address tool which you can use after doing the proper redirection and SEO Audit.

A change of address notification helps you manage the transition needed by Google to index your new URLs at the new address, while minimizing impact to your current ranking in Google Search results.