I am planning to change my website domain name (from DomainA to DomainB) and in the process planning to setup permanent redirect (301) from old domain to new domain. So setting up a permanent redirect with the domain service provider (in the domain control panel) is enough? Or do I have to do any thing more to redirect all old URL's to new URL's. The URL structure on both old and new sites is going to be exactly same. Thanks in advance for your answers.
Hi, You will need to do a 301 redirect with the http server anyway if you want the URL in the users browser to change to domainb.com if they type in domaina.com. You also have to consider your current configuration before modifying your DNS settings. 1. Does your mail server have domainA as an alias for domainB? 2. Are there any other services hosted on your domain besides http and mail? How will this affect them? Do you just want to configure DomainA as a CNAME for DomainB? I'd recommend having your web-server redirect anything heading to DomainA.com/some/path to DomainB.com/some/path. You should easily be able to find examples with a quick google.
Thanks XOUS for your additional check list. I think I did not make my self very clear earlier. This is what I am planning on doing? I have a website with good traffic and nothing is going to change in the websites including URL structure. Only thing that is going to change is the domain name. For Example my site domain will change from old.com to new.com. In the process I do not want to loose any traffic or search engine ranking. To do so I am planning on pointing old.com to the IP address of domain service provider (godaddy. My hosting provider is not godaddy). So any body hitting old.com will go to godaddy first. On godaddy in the domain control panel I am planning on placing a permanent redirect (301) from old.com to new.com. So all traffic will be redirected from old.com to new.com. So instead of handing the redirection on my server, I am planning on handling the redirection with the domain service provider. Does any body see any issues with this approach? Thanks!
Hi, I am by no means a SEO expert but from what I can tell; you will lose search engine ranking. i.e. your site will "lose" its pagerank the next time your site is crawled. If you want to avoid this I would suggest first setting up your old domain as an alias (Parked domain in cPanel) and pointing both domains at your web hosting server. This will result in both sites having the exact same content with no redirection. This will still allow people to find your site via the old domains search engine's results. (it won't disappear at next crawl) This also gives you time to get a better rank on your new domain by getting anyone who links to your site to update the links to the new domain. After about a year, or whenever the new domain as built up sufficient SE rank, then you can move to a redirect.
Can you please tell me how to set up the old domain as an alias to the new domain. I don't see a way of doing it in the godaddy domain control panel. Does any body know of any issues with search engines on two domains pointing to the same content (meaning running duplicate websites) ? Thanks
I can see that people do great efforts to avoid that search engines have the slightest reason to suspect of duplicate content. I don't know if the matter is really so important, but this is the situation. I would dare say that, besides having two exactly duplicated servers, the surest way to make SE suspect of duplicate content is to do what you are suggesting. Specifically, I am referring to having two domains pointing through DNS to the same HTTP server. I am not either a SEO expert, but IMHO there is no way that you can avoid loosing your search rank when changing domain names. All I can suggest is that you maintain your old server with just a redirect to the new server until the new get its own rank. Of course, when I talk of 'new' and 'old' I am talking in logical terms. Maybe if you submit your question to a SEO forum you will a get a more authoritative answer.
I have found out that Godaddy (My Domain Service Provider) is not doing 301 redirect totally correctly, hence instead of using Godaddy I started using my own application to achieve this. Godaddy is first doing a 302 (temporarily moved) redirect and then doing a 301 redirect. If that is OK, then Godaddy can be used, otherwise avoid Godaddy.