Just like moving to a new house, moving a website to a new domain is a stress-filled, detail-oriented transition. But sometimes, it just has to happen. Occasionally, circumstances warrant a domain move. Perhaps you’ve renamed your business, for example, either for branding purposes, or due to a merger or acquisition. Maybe one of your subdomains has swelled in size and warrants a stand-alone website. There are myriad reasons for moving.
When it’s time to move, the goal should be to make the experience, work-intensive as it may be for you, friction-free to the end user. In the process, you don’t want to leave your hard-earned search reputation in the dust. But do expect a full body-blow where your organic search rankings are concerned, at least until the dust settles. It will take time for a new domain’s pages to laboriously ascend Google’s rankings to approximately the same level they previously occupied. On Yahoo! and MSN, the process is sometimes faster. You’re likely looking at a one- to three-month gap minimum.
The last thing you want users or search engine spiders to find is the dreaded 404 (file not found) page when they’re trying to reach you. That would be the equivalent of moving and leaving no forwarding address.
So, let’s say you’re going to move your domain from www.AcmeDynamite.com to www.AcmeDynamite.org. What to do? Here’s what Google’s Ríona MacNamara recommends (also see http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/04/best-practices-when-moving-your-site.html):
• Test the process. First, move the contents of only one directory or subdomain. Then use a permanent 301 redirect to redirect those pages on the old site to the new site. This tells all the search engines that the site has permanently moved.
• Check to see if the pages on the new site appear in organic search results. When you’re satisfied the process has worked correctly, proceed to move the rest of the site. Don’t do a blanket redirect that sends all the traffic from the old site to the new homepage. Although this will get around 404 errors, it’s a bad user experience. A page-to-page redirect (each page on the old site is redirected to the corresponding page on the new site) is more work, but provides users with a consistent, transparent experience. If there isn’t a perfect match between pages on the old and new sites, at least try to ensure that every page on the old site redirects to a new page with similar content.
• If you’re changing your domain because of site rebranding or redesign, consider doing this in two phases: First, move the site; then launch the redesign. This manages the amount of change users see at any stage in the process, and can make the process seem smoother. Keeping variables to a minimum also makes it easier to troubleshoot unexpected behavior.
• Check both external and internal links to pages on your site. In a perfect world, you’d contact the webmaster of each and every site that links to yours with the request that they update the links to point to the corresponding page on your new domain. Naturally, this isn’t possible or practical for sites with thousands, or perhaps even millions, of inbound links. But at least make sure all your own pages with internal links redirect to the new site. Check your web analytics logs for the top-referring external domains and personally contact those sites’ webmasters with the request that they update their links to you. Once content is in place on the new server, use link-checking software to catch broken links on your site. This is particularly important if the original content included absolute links (like www.YourDomain.com/music/beatles/sergentpepper.html) instead of relative links (like .../beatles/sergeantpepper.html).
• Retain control of the old site domain for at least three months, just in case.
• Add the new site to your Google Webmaster Tools account and verify your ownership. Create and submit a sitemap that lists the URLs on the new site. This alerts Google that content is now available on the new site and it’s ready to be crawled. Don’t forget to do the same at Yahoo! Site Submit.
• Finally, keep both the new and old sites verified in Webmaster Tools. Review crawl errors regularly to ensure that the 301 redirects from the old site work properly and the new site doesn’t display unwanted 404 error pages.
Launch the new domain with as much online fanfare as possible: news releases, blog posts, social network updates, banner and search engine ads—as much as time and your budget will allow. The goal is to have, as well as to attract, as many links as possible that point to the new domain to illuminate a path for search engine spiders and crawlers.