Changing domain name without changing ranking position

04/10/08 10:00 AM

So, you’ve spent months, maybe even years building up a website that now, after a lot of massaging and analysing, sits regally near the top of Google. You’re pretty pleased with yourself, until the higher ups decide that they want to re brand. That means a new name, a new logo and yes, a new domain name. This can’t mean you need to start again from the beginning, can it?

The good news is, no, it doesn’t. Well, not entirely anyway. Your first action should be to employ what’s known as a 301 redirect. This will give anyone going to your old site notice that you have moved and present them with your new URL. Perhaps more importantly it will then instruct search engine spiders to change their information for that page. The page will stay in the search engine’s index, PageRank and all incoming links should be transferred.

Notice I said ‘should’ in that last sentence? Ominous, wasn’t it? Well, here’s why. Unfortunately, even if you do everything absolutely correctly search engines can have trouble processing changes in domain. We’re talking weeks, maybe even months, for you to recover all your traffic, links and rankings. For this reason, you need to think very carefully before you switch.

Ask yourself, is this absolutely necessary? Factor in a loss of revenue, rankings etc. over the period of change and weigh that up against your reasons for changing domains.

If you really must change do it gradually. Rather than redirecting all your pages at once do it piece by piece. This way you can make sure everything’s working properly before you get to the point of no return.

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