Change of domain

[mumsbiz]

Hi,

Please could someone give us some advice. I want to change my website/domain name, currently it's xyz and it has a good ranking in google, when you search for the keyword it comes up page one top of the page but I'd like to know will this affect if I change the domain name, whats the best way? Should I keep the current domain (renew it and keep using it) name then redirect it to the new domain name?

Many thanks in advance.

regards x

[nickjohnston]

You should absolutely keep the existing domain, but if you want to move to a new name you can redirect it to that, using the new one for the website itself. This is a straightforward process, and should retain approximately the same ranking as the current name.

[timruffles]

Don't do anything before you've done your research!

Changing domain actually has to be done very carefully, and you need to ensure a one-to-one redirect of old pages to new. You need to do a 301 Redirect on each page on the old to the new. 301 redirects are a way of telling browsers/search engines 'This content has permanently moved over there', and is the best way to do it in an SEO friendly way.

Google also recommends keeping the old domain with this remapping up for 180 days.

Let me know if you need some more pointers.

[nickjohnston]

Really just a single, quick change. But making sure the redirect is a 301 is important.

[sanjiv]

Really just a single, quick change. But making sure the redirect is a 301 is important.
Also don't change any of the content on the website when that is happening, Keep it exactly the same.

[JJ Spencer]

High ranking in goodle is difficult to get, so keep it.

[MarcusMiller]

I can't post links yet but plenty of info about 301 redirects out there. Look for good reliable info from google webmaster blog or matt cutts (google bigwig).

If you really must change the domain, you can retain 'most' of your ranking in google with a 301 redirect. If the content is staying the same it should be pretty simple but no reason not to add new pages in the meanwhile.

That said, it may take a while to work properly and you will likely see a dip whilst it kicks in. One other point to take in is that whilst google will pass most PR through the 301s and restablish rankings, the same can't be said for Yahoo, Bing etc so if your analytics show a sizeable amount of traffic from those domains then I would think very carefully about this.

There is a good article about this on seomoz by dr pete (again, sorry, can't link due to noobie status).

If your domain sucks, there are lots of good reasons to do this but I would invest in a few hours with a consultant who can set up the site wide redirect and dot the i's and cross the t's to keep disruption to a minimum.

Any questions, please feel free to give me a shout, happy to help!

Marcus

[webhostuk]

Hi,

Please could someone give us some advice. I want to change my website/domain name, currently it's xyz and it has a good ranking in google, when you search for the keyword it comes up page one top of the page but I'd like to know will this affect if I change the domain name, whats the best way? Should I keep the current domain (renew it and keep using it) name then redirect it to the new domain name?

Many thanks in advance.

regards x

Its really very simple if everything is good about the domain why do your wish to change it? do you wish to drop the value of your site?

Age of quality Google rank domain is also an important factor..you should not even think of changing it.. rather you should work on how you can get the best out of it.

[dunerider]

It would be interesting to know why you want to change domains. What are your perceived advantages?

[ReformedSinner]

What @timruffles said is right. You should redirect the existing pages to the new pages in your new domain using 301 redirect (http://www.internetofficer.com/seo/301-redirect/) to retain the rankings that you already had.

[MASSEY]

I don't get why you would change that, is it a .com .co.uk or one of those weird Tld's