Domain transfer I have two separate clients who want to change the domains for their web sites as their URLs are too specific and no longer reflect their service offerings. The domains in question have been in operation at least 3 years. They gain business from their current domains and have a reasonable ammount of site traffic and OK google placement for search terms. How do I go about changing the old domains to the new domains with out loosing page rank and traffic? What are the risks? How do I minimise the risks? Has anyone had success in doing this? If the risks are too great maybe its not worth the domain change. Thanks. Jonnie
changing the domain could lose everything like traffic, pagerank, immediate earnings etc, if you have good position in google and getting good traffic from these domains, then don try to change, register a new one and do the job...
"register a new one and do the job..." - I don't understand this part of your reply. Can you be more specific? Thanks.
He means to say either of the following: (1) You should register a new domain name, which your clients want, and it would use a cloaked redirect to the old site. Your visitors would see the new domain in their address bar but the site would still be old, that'd mean no loss in traffic, SERPs, pagerank etc. (2) You could register a new domain name and transfer all of the files and settings to the new domain name, and then you could 301 redirect all the present URLs to the new URLs, that'd pass on the traffic and serp results. But a tip here, you should only proceed with 301 redirection after your new domain is out of the Google Sandbox. Tutorial on doing a 301 Redirect Domain cloaking guide Domain cloaking is considered illegal in many general uses, therefore make sure you research around firstly. IT
Thank you for your reply. But if I took the option 2 path - would that not mean I would be running two sites with identical content for some months until the new site was out of the sand box - and wouldn't I be penalised for that?
No. You would take down the existing site and permanently redirect the URL's to the new domain. This is your best bet if your are forced to change domains. If you have very good SERPs, it's not really advised though.
I did this myself on a 2 year old site. I did a 301 redirect from the old domain to the new one. I lost a lot of traffic. I still got redirected visits, but it was basically like marketing for a new website. You have rebuild link popularity and promote from scratch because you're essentially throwing away all the backlinks you had to your old site. It was definitely not a good experience for me. If had to do it again, I probably wouldn't unless I had a real good domain name. If the new domain is mediocre, I wouldn't suggest it on a site that is already established. Instead of replacing the domain, build a new website on the new domain. More the merrier. Steve