Hi - I hope I am asking this question under right section. I have a wordpress blog which receives great SE traffic per month. The blog has been online for more than 2 years. Now I'm thinking about bringing any of following changes. I have to make the first change (its mandatory) however second change is optional yet important. Option - 1 : I want to change the domain name of my current website Option -2 : If changing domain causes extensive damage, I will go for change in theme of website (its wordpress based blog basically). I am calling experts (although every advise is highly appreciated) to put forward their views on the below points. If I change domain name - 1 - Is it easy to divert all the traffic to the new domain? 2 - Will the new domain rank for all those keywords as current domain (I am ok if it takes time, my question is will it be possible or not) 3 - If there is a loss of traffic, what percentage of traffic loss do you forecast? 4 - During the transition phase (diverting traffic to new domain), Am I legally allowed to place adsense ads (since the traffic will be diverted to new domain). If I change theme of the website only - 1 - Will there be any loss of traffic? 2 - If yes, what percentage of traffic loss do you forecast? I will be very thankful if anyone could help me with this. Any piece of advise will be highly appreciated. Regards Sam
Sam, I am not an expert, but if your current domain name is getting a significant amount of traffic, changing it to a new domain name will be suicidal. May I ask you, why are you changing it to a new domain name in the first place? Is it too long or crappy sounding? What's the problem with it? At any rate, I'd advise you against changing your domain name.
I would try to avoid changing the domain name. Sure there are many options, such as redirecting each page from the old site to the new corresponding page on the new domain, but it can take weeks, if not months for your traffic to fully recover. What about options such as starting a new site + domain, and leave the old one intact? Changing your theme *should* have zero impact on your sites traffic. If you can improve the sites interface to be more pleasant, keep navigation clear and user friendly and if you can keep or improve the sites page load time, then a new theme is going to work wonders for you.