How to Change Your Domain Name without Losing Your Website's Ranking?

Domain Name Registration

If in case the domain name of you site is changed it can have an adverse impact on the online traffic as well as SEO. For the purpose of search engine optimization, actually this is unadvisable. It is important to know that that the domain is linked with a range of metrics including authority, hyperlinks, characteristics and trust.

There certainly are a few risks involved if you are considering changing or transferring the domain to a new one. This change is alright if a few important aspects are taken care of. As far as traffic on the search engine is concerned the losses can definitely be minimized.

Understanding Technologies

Whenever the change is made, you will need to have a better understanding on various technologies of the web since they are responsible in affecting the status of SEO. The change is best done by an expert or a tech savvy individual who knows what exactly is being done.

At the time of registering an old domain or registering the new one at the domain registrar, obtain a new name for the domain. The common TLDs used are .net, .gr, .com etc which are utilized as GEO location signal. Rankings could be affected when a new TDL is used. If an aged or old domain is being purchased, be careful since there could be a risk of it being banned by some of the search engines.

Research on Previous Records

It is best if some research is done to determine its history and previous records. A site called archieve.org could be best utilized to get an idea on how the site looked like in the past. If spamming is the reason for the domain being banned then a request for reconsideration can be filed.

Another aspect to keep in mind is ‘coming soon’ page uploading. Even if a single page is uploaded on new domains the crawlers on the search engines have the new site indexed. If there is a parked domain then this is identified by the search engine which you will need to keep in mind. Some content can be placed on the new pages where a mention is made that, this is going to be the new website location. This will surely help the search engines in identifying the new domain.

Aspects to Consider

There are other aspects to keep in mind like having just small parts of the site transferred which is of course optional. The next thing is get the files, images and web pages uploaded to the new site, record the changes if made in the paths, structure or folders which enables better mapping of URLs of old pages. The old pages will have to be redirected to the new web pages.

The best use of the tool for a change of address will have to be made in Google Webmaster Console.  A specification will be needed that the old domain has been transferred to a new one. Ensure that all the backlinks are promptly updated. If you are patient and keep up to date then you can ensure a good transition or domain name transfer from the old domain to a new one.