My client wants to change domain name... Redirect help!
-
Hello,
I have a client who wants to change domain names. The site is designed using WordPress, there are many plugins that will redirect links but they have to be same domain links. When I change the domain I would like to redirect all the old links to the same pages on the new url. How do I accomplish this? The plugin redirection or Yoast will not allow a redirect from one domain to another.
Thanks for any help on this matter. I have 200+ Urls to redirect.
-
As long as the ONLY thing you're changing is the domain name (e.g. all URLS within WordPress will remain identical) the redirect process can be accomplished with a single rewrite rule in your site's htaccess file. There's no reason to write (or bog down your system with) a redirect for each individual page URL.
The configuration of this redirect will depend on whether the primary URL uses the www prefix or not, and whether it uses https.
In addition to the rewrite rule, you need to verify the new domain in Google Search Console (and transfer any preexisting disavow file to it if one existed for the old domain) as well as using the change of address tool to further inform Google of the change.
To help speed up the indexing of the new domain, it can be helpful to leave the old xml sitemap in place for a week or two so that search engines can more quickly discover the redirects. It's also beneficial to try to get at least some of the most powerful existing incoming links from other sites updated to point to the new domain. This takes direct outreach to the other site owners with the request, but it can help rescue some of the slight loss of ranking authority lost through the redirect, and is another good signal to Google of the change.
Finally, be sure you've updated the domain name in your Google Analytics account as well.
Hope that helps?
Paul
-
Hi Donald
If you're going to be doing this yourself, I'd read up on all the links posted by Andy and preferably find more on how to change domain names. If you don't do it properly your clients site can take a huge hit in visibility. You don't want that - trust me.
What I'd do is make a spreadsheet of every single URL on the old site and what that URL will be called on the new site. If you keep the site & URL structure the same, this should be fairly straightforward. But once you have your list, you should add them to your .htaccess to make sure you do a one-to-one redirect. That way the individual URLs should keep most of their juice and you minimize the losses.
But just be sure you know exactly what you're doing - otherwise it can hurt a lot more than it should.
-
Yes..it is domain level redirect you can achieve this through htacess file.
-
No, you need to redirect all URLs...
Have a read of this on using the change of address tool in Google.
- Set up server-side redirects (301-redirect directives) from your old URLs to the new ones. The Change of address tool won't function without it.
-Andy
-
Hi Ikkie,
do you mean a domain level redirect? such as hgt.com redirected to hgtnow.com and not worry about redirecting each link from their hgt.com/1 to their hgtnow.com/1 counterpart?
-
Hi Donald,
The very best starting point is by reading the Google guides on moving a site.
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2008/04/best-practices-when-moving-your-site.html
I don't actually know about plugins for Wordpress that will do this but your solution is going to lie around making the required changes in your .htaccess file. There is a lot of information out there on how best to do this, but this is what you need to be looking at.
-Andy
-
Hi
Just simply use 301 redirect to your new domain; this will bring you not only the traffic of your existing site as well as the backlinks and juice of those back links to your site.
I believe, this will behave in the same manner with plugins based links as well.Just make sure you follow the guidelines and you do it properly.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Canonical Question: Root Domain Geo Redirects to SubFolder.
Howdy, Working on a larger eComm site that 302s you based on your location. With that in mind should I canonicalize the final page. domain.com => 302 => domain.com/us/, domain.com/fr/, etc... (Should these all have a canonical pointing to the root domain.com?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | blake.runyon0 -
New Site (redesign) Launched Without 301 Redirects to New Pages - Too Late to Add Redirects?
We recently launched a redesign/redevelopment of a site but failed to put 301 redirects in place for the old URL's. It's been about 2 months. Is it too late to even bother worrying about it at this point? The site has seen a notable decrease in site traffic/visits, perhaps due to this issue. I assume that once the search engines get an error on a URL, it will remove it from displaying in search results after a period of time. I'm just not sure if they will try to re-crawl those old URLs at some point and if so, it may be worth it to have those 301 redirects in place. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrandBuilder0 -
How to recover google rank after changing the domain name?
I just started doing SEO for a new client. The case is a bit unique as they build a new website and for some reason lunched in under another domain name. Old name is foodstepsinasia.com and new one is foodstepsinasiatravel.com OLD one is a respected webites with 35 in MOZ page authority and with +15000 incomming link (104 root domains) NEW one is curently on 0 The programmer has just that build the new website has set it up so that when people write or find the old domain name it redirect to the front page of the new website with the new domain name. this caused that my friends lost a lot of their rankings was so I believ it was a very bad solution. But I also think I can get most of the old rankings back, but my question is what to do now to get as much back of the rankings as fast as possible?? A) I believe I must change the domain name back to foodstepsinasia.com on the new website ? O B) Should I on the old website try finding the url of the pages with most page authority and recreate these urls on the new website or should i redict them to a page with related content? Looking forward to feedback from someone who have experience with similar cases. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nm19770 -
Rebranding/Changing the name of an established domain in order to target a bigger market?
So let's say I have a site called "ToyotaParts.com" that has good SEO metrics and is ranking highly for keywords like "toyota tires", "toyota battery", etc.... What if I decide that I wanna target other cars as well with my site and keywords like "mazda tires", yet still want to take advantage of my domain's existing authority... Can I do something like get a new domain like "carparts.com" and redirect the old domain to it and then continue to create new pages that would target new keywords, or would I risk losing my current domain's authority or running into other seo issues? Thanks a lot
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | benjonson0 -
Can we have differnt Domain name and Busienss name?
Can we have different domain and Business name for website? I want to create real-estate website. I want to registered domain name ‘Nycityhomes.com’ and want to my business name (in logo as well) is ‘Sunny Associates’. Can we do that for local SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlexanderWhite0 -
How can i redirect my site to other domain ?
I have been running an eCommerce site since 2008 and have a PR3 with mostly have an authority link from reputed sites, how can I transfer my existing eCommerce site to the new domain so in the new domain i get SEO value from the old domain. Please advice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chandubaba0 -
Are there diminishing returns of keyword stuffing domain names?
Aside from the obvious usability issue of having a super long domain name. Let's just for a moment image that that doesn't matter at all. Is there a point at which having another keyword in your domain name is not giving a significant boost to SER? Lets be more specific. Often we see two keyword domains, and they rank well. and I have also seen many 3 keyword domains raking well. but what about a 4, 5 or 6 keyword domain name? like: keyword1keyword2keyword3keyword4keyword4keyword6.com <-- obviously it looks ridiculous, but we are ignoring that factor for the duration of this question. I would also like to know in multiple keyword domain names, does the location of the keywords have any relevance? is it like title tags? closer to the front = more boost? And furthermore one last question on the same subject. Does google consider varations of words when it gives the boost to "exact match" domain name in search results. for example: BookStory.com V.S. BookStories.com when someone searches for "story books" would these two get the same bonus?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adriandg0 -
Keyword-Rich Domains - Redirect?
Hi, Mozzers- I have a client that has a bunch of pretty nice keyword-rich domain names. Their traffic and rankings are good. They provide legal services in the Chicago area. I have lots of good content that I could use to start a blog using a domain like keyword,keyword-blog.com. Good idea? Currently I have a resources area on their website but feel like this area could be getting a little bloated and some news-related stuff isn't really appropriate. 2 Questions: Should I use one of the decent domains for a blog and build up the rankings, traffic, and link to the main site? Or is this lots of work for little payout? Both sites would be hosted in the cloud. Some of the domain names are related to their name, others are keyword or geo-targeted. Would it be wise to setup 301 redirects going to their website? Pros/cons? If you need additional info, please PM me for details. Thank you, friends! LHC
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lhc670