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So, you've worked hard for years to obtain good SEO rankings for your website, but for unavoidable reasons you have to change your domain name. Disaster? We take a look at what you can do to prevent your hard work going down the drain. Duplicate WebsitesWhen moving to a new domain, many simply copy across content from the old website to the new and run them alongside. This is certainly the easiest way of doing things, but it can send a mixed message if your branding has changed. You'll also have to update two websites which will end up time consuming if the website is large. When it comes to SEO rankings, duplicate content creates its own problem. Lots of content is great, but it has to be fresh. Google and other search engines will credit the content to the original author, based on the date of when it was indexed. Consequently, the same content on the new domain will not carry as much 'weight' in the search engine rankings. Redirecting your website.So, that's duplicate websites ruled out! We move onto what is known as a '301 redirect.' This method is recommended by Google, with advice being listed within the updated Google Webmasters Tools system. A 301 redirect is a response with a status code that redirects a browser to go to another link. It can be implemented in different ways, as shown in this article by WebConfs. It's also worth checking this Google YouTube video on 301 redirects which answers some good questions: Make sure you don't do a single redirect from all webpages to your new homepage. Although it prevents any 404 errors, this won't ultimately be good for users and its not good for rankings either. Instead, do page-by-page redirects. If there isn't an exact match for your new website, at least try to re-direct to similar content, or see it as an opportunity to create a new page. The downside - losing backlinksIt goes without saying that you should aim to at least maintain or improve your level (and quality of linking throughout your new website using typical PageRank sculpting techniques. There is no way currently of Google transferring PageRank based on the amount of external backlinks you have accrued to your webpages. You will simply have to get in touch with website owners to get them to change their link to you. Obviously, this is an inconvenience for them, so try to make it worthwhile for them. Could you provide them with better, fresh content? Would any of their content be beneficial for your website's users? Getting StartedIf you're ready to tell Google about your domain change, its still important to keep your old domain up for 180 days so to ensure there are no problems as Google indexes the changes. Once you've followed the instructions given by Google, create a new Sitemap for the new website and submit it (assuming you have checked for broken links beforehand!). You can then submit the Sitemap through the same Webmasters Tools system. Once this has been picked up, it will reveal any crawl errors and how many pages have have been indexed.
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