Hello all, I have been running a site since April which is has been at domain www.example.com. I am changing to a new domain shortly which will be a little more relevant to my sites new title. Over the course of running the site since April we've built up a decent search engine standing, alexa ranking and such. I'm guessing I will lose all of that once the new domain comes into effect? thats really what I'd like to know, is there any way of keeping my rankings the actual hosting and physical existence of the site will be the same. Is it a simple matter of pointing my new domain at the hosting, and maybe leaving my old one there for any stray traffic than might still be going through it, or is there anything more i would need to do in order to transfer as much of my current domains standing to the new one? Sorry for my poor wording of this question, half knowing what im talking about makes it harder work Thanks
You will lose the traffic once you change the domain name. The better way is to keep replace the current domain name with the new one and set the current domain as an Alias (i.e. park the domain on the new domain name). OR why don't you just keep the current domain name as it is and park the new one on it OR set it as an Alias?
Hey thanks for your response Please excuse my intense case of Noobitus, but where and how would I add the alias? I have seen some sites that change address and say you typed in the old address, it'd basically forward you to the new one and show the web address as the new one? IS that an alias?
1) Create new hosting account for your new domain any where you want. 2) Upload the old site content to the new site (domain). 3) Create a 301 (permanent) redirection from old domain to new domain (better for all links). 4) Keep the old domain like that for some time, till new domain has gained enough popularity.
Hello, again thanks for your response Could I just point out that despite my purchase of another domain I am with the same webhosting company I'm not physically moving any files at all, everything on my server will remain exactly where it is, and at present both of my domains are pointing at the content. Is it possible to make this 301 domain redirection (permanent) in CPANEL? Pls let me know, thanks Luke
Luke, yes you can do that. But going as per what you have described, it implies that you have parked new domain over the old domain. If so, it will cause technical (which may lead to SEO) problems later on once your old domain expires or you decide on stop using it.
Looks like I'll have to renew both domains for the duration of the site running then? The main concern I had really was that google would see it as duplicated content in two places, but I guess as its just two domains pointing at a single set of files, rather than two duplicate sets of files and two domains it should be OK ?
When parked one over other, google look at it as two duplicate content, but when a permanent 301 redirection is in place google honour it..