For any business whether small or large having a website is absolutely necessary. The domain nameis the main anchor point for all of the marketing activities, especially all digital marketing campaigns usually end up taking users to the website. That is why the website and domain nameare the most important parts of overall marketing and communication strategy. Businesses in Dubai and all around the UAE invest huge resources in digital marketing and their websites. The website have multiple sources of traffic, as much as a website will have traffic as much leads and conversions it can generate for the business. There are several marketing channels that can generate website traffic. One of the most important digital marketing channel is the SEO or search engine optimization. The SEO greatly helps businesses gaining huge website traffic from their targeted audience, this traffic is absolutely free and also known as organic traffic. Usually for a corporate website the organic traffic accounts for almost 70% of the total website traffic. Which makes it the single biggest source of the website traffic.
When due to any reason a business decides to change its domain name the first question that came into the mind is how it will impact your current traffic and more importantly what will be the impact on the business and online lead/conversions. One thing is for sure changing domain name could possibly impact your website traffic and it can even completely disrupt your online lead generation funnel. Before we jump into the topic it is important to discuss the basics of the SEO too:
What is SEO and how does it Works?
The SEO or search engine optimization is a set of various different processes and techniques that a business/website manager applied on a website to increase its traffic. The website traffic have direct impact on your online leads and conversions. Businesses usually hire professional SEO staff or outsource it to a third-party like RSI Concepts to improve their SEO. The search engines such as Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc. scans a website first and then rate it as per the quality, reputation/authenticity and relevance of the web page to a searchable term or topic. The searchable word or topic is called keyword or key-phrase. The Google is the most dominating search engine with almost 96% of the UAE search market share and all other search engines also follow the same sets of rules so we will focus more on Google. The Google and other search engines have automated software programs who keep scanning internet and the online data repositories to extract data from the websites and measure several parameters.
Then the search engine performs in-depth analysis of the content of the website, its quality, backlink profiles, referrals and even the source code. The search engine also considers user experience, customer journey and social media presence, etc. Then on the bases of all these information the search engine rates and ranks a web page. When someone searches in Google about the product or service you are offering or even about your business, the Google pull out all the relevant pages and prepare the results (SERP) where the most relevant website with highest quality of content and good SEO rating comes at the top. In the SERP (search engine result page) the top 3 to 5 websites could get more than 70% of the clicks. That is how the search engine works and that is how a corporate website can generate valuable website traffic from the SEO.
How changing your Domain Name could affect your Website Traffic and SEO?
The domain name is a website address that we put in the browser (Chrome, Safari, Microsoft Edge, etc.) to access the website. Such as in order to access Google search engine page we have to type www.google.com in the web browser. The domain name consists of three major parts, the subdomain [www.] the actual name [google] and the TLD (Top Level Domain) or domain extension [.com]. There is another most important part which is called protocol it is either http:// or https://. Here in Dubai and all around the UAE most of the people believe that the domain name change is only changing the name which in our example is google. However, that is not true, in fact any change in protocol, subdomain, actual name and TLD will be considered as a change in the domain name.
For example if we keep the google.com same but change www to ww2 or something else, or if we keep www and google same but change .com to .net or something, the search engine will see it as a completely new domain. Here are some other most common examples of change of domain:
- Moving from a www version (www.youroldsite.com) to non-www version (youroldsite.com)
- Moving from HTTP version (http://www.youroldsite.com) to HTTPS version (https://www.youroldsite.com)
- Moving from old name (www.youroldsite.com) to a new name (www.yournewsite.com)
Let us suppose you already have an established digital presence, you have adequate social media shares, backlinks and bookmarks, if the domain name change is implemented poorly you might end up losing everything. Your previous social media shares will lead to a broken page, Google will mark them as broken pages as well and so on. Which means you might end up losing 80% to 90% of you organic, referral and social media traffic. Which could be catastrophic. That is why if a domain name change is necessary then it should be done professionally to prevent any harm to the website traffic and SEO.
Steps to change Domain Name without Hurting SEO
We have already discussed the domain name and the way how search engines view the domain name change. We have also mentioned the devastating affects it could have on the website traffic and rankings if the domain name change is not done professionally. Here are some stepsyou should follow when changing the domain name without hurting your SEO and losing valuable website traffic:
1. Carefully Chose New Domain Name
This is very common among the digital marketing managers and business owners to acquire an older domain name and link it to their website to gain additional SEO benefits related to the domain age. In some cases this could be very beneficial too, but it is extremely important to carefully examine the history of that domain name and do a full-scale audit before acquiring it. There are several online tools and SEO analytical platforms that can provide you the history of the domain name, its DA (domain authority), PA (page authority) and Spam score. Furthermore the backlinks investigation is also important. Let say you are purchasing a domain name which is 4 years old, it have reasonable DA & PA and its Spam score is also acceptable, but the backlinks are coming from shady/spammy websites, then rather than adding up to your SEO it could even destroy your existing SEO as well. If you are choosing a brand new domain name then no need to worry about the history or anything else.
2. Migrating the Site to the New Domain
There are several ways to migrate your website to the new domain. Since we are talking about corporate and business websites, so it is important to minimize the down time as much as possible. The best possible way is to upload and configure your website to a new server/hosting and when everything is ready just bring down the older domain and point the new domain name to the new server. This could minimize the down time to almost zero. Pointing domain means updating domain registry and other records at the domain registrar’s control panel. It should be done by the domain registrars or by the technical team. A skilled web designer or developer would be able to do it. The other way is to keep the website where it is already hosted and point it to the new domain name. This could take from a few hours to up to 3 days, depend on your service providers.
3. Applying Redirects from your Old Domain and URLs to the New Domain and URLs
One of the most important thing that most of the businesses overlooked is putting redirects at all URLs. Usually the main domain name is redirected and internal pages and internal links remain as is, which not only have negative impact on the SEO but sometimes users also end up on clicking on old URLs which lead them to broken links or unavailable pages, which is bad for user experience. Here are some example of how the redirects should be done:
- oldname.com to www.newname.com
- oldname.com/about to www.newname.com/about
- oldname.com/services to www.newname.com/services
Same should be applied to all internal pages one by one. For that you can contact to your domain registrar and hosting service provider. They will help you with the task. Else you can also hire a professional web designer or developer to do the redirects for you. It is also important that your new website must have only one version either with www. (www.newname.com) or non-www. (newname.com). These days the HTTPS has almost become an industry standard. Make sure if your older site had HTTPS then the new must also have it. And in case if the older site didn’t had HTTPS we will recommend you to purchase an SSL Certificate to get HTTPS for your new domain name.
In case if you have a blog or any other publication section, make sure the redirects applied to it as well. Usually the websites have a lot of mentioning of other pages. The mentioning means embedding a URL in plain text and make it clickable. That is mostly done manually, so the chances of skipping redirect at such URLs are very high. It is important to double check all those types of URLs too. Other URLs can be updated from the source code, by programming tools or from database, however, anchor texts (embedded links) are mostly done manually. That is why it is important to double check them. Broken links are very bad for the SEO and for user experience. That is why the redirection process is crucial for the domain name changes. It is also important to update the off-site mentioning of the URLs such as at your social media profiles, emails, brochures and any other digital media.
4. Verify Your Website with Google Analytical Tools
As I have mentioned above the Google is the most widely used search engine and it would be responsible for almost all of your search traffic. So, it is important to verify your new domain name with Google. The Google Search Console is the main analytical tool which provides your site performance data and various other SEO related information. The Google Search Console is the only direct communication channel between you and Google for the SEO activities. So, make sure you have updated your new domain name on the Google Analytical tools and Google Search Console. The Google Search Console also provides a control panel which allow you to put a change of address request. Once the change of domain address is submitted it will inform Google that your old domain name has been changed to the new domain name.
This will resolve almost all major problems that you might face due to change of domain name. But make sure you are the owner of the old domain name and also for the new domain name, without that you won’t be able to do this step. Google also provides an SEO analytical tool, which is called Google Analytical Tool, make sure you login to your Google Analytic accounts and update all mentioning of the older URL with the new URL.
5. Create and Upload New Sitemap
The sitemap is basically a blue print of your entire website, it contains all the URLs of your website, whether internal pages, blogs, or press releases, everything will be there in the sitemap. It helps search engines scan your website and register all its URLs. The Google and other search engines have automated software, usually called spiders and crawlers, these crawlers scan through all of your URLs and collect data that is required by the search engine algorithms. On the bases of this data the search engine read the content and determines several SEO ratings. The sitemap is also important because it provide Google your prospective regarding the importance of several pages. You can mark and mention the priority or importance of several pages in the sitemap to let Google understand which pages you want to prefer on others. The sitemap can be created in XML format, for that you might be requiring help from a professional web designer or developer who can create it for you and then you can upload it through the search console within in a minute. This will help Google to index new pages more quickly. Same can be done for other search engines too.
Additional Tips for Changing the Domain Name
If you have followed through the above steps so by now your migration is completed. However, there are a few things worth mentioning here:
- 301 Redirect: Always use 301 Redirect in such situations, as it tells Google and other search engines that the web page have permanently moved to the new URL, hence the Search engine transfers the page credits and ranking scores to the new URL
- Domain Ownership: The most crucial step to transfer older rankings and credits to the new domain name is to keep the ownership of the new domain same as of the old domain name. It will tell Google and other search engines that you are not a new domain which help you sustain the existing rankings. It is important to keep the old domain name hosted and registered under the same registration name as of the new for at least 4 to 5 years in future.
- Configure Google Analytics Tools: It is important that you configure and update Google suits after completing the migration. The Google suite includes Google Analytical Tools, Google Search Console and Google Tag Manager. Make sure the ownership remains same for the old and new domain name to make it successful.
- Keep the Existing Web Design and Site Structure: It is important to keep the existing web design and the entire site structure same while migrating your corporate website to the new domain. If you are also planning to revamp the website, do it after migrating and indexing with Google and other search engines.
- Update Backlinks: Backlinks are one of the most important ranking factor as it shows other websites are endorsing your website or its content and it raise your trust and authenticity. Try to contact all site who are giving you backlinks and update as many as you could. Even though you got 301 redirects, but it is good to have direct link rather a link redirecting to your new web page.
- CloselyMonitor Analytical Tools:It is crucial to analyze the SEO feedbacks and analytical data from the monitoring tools such as Google Analytical tool, Google Search Console and any other tool that you might be using for the SEO activity. It will provide you a clear picture of how successful the migration was.
Conclusion
There could be several reasons a business would want to change their domain name. For example, your current domain name doesn’t effectively present your brand image or brand value. Your domain name is not much helpful for your SEO strategy. You might want to target other markets and regions, for example, if a business is operating in UAE, the .ae TLD is the best to gain visitors trust and to show the business is based in UAE. But if you want to target the entire GCC or even the international markets, the more appropriate choice would be the .com and so on. Whatever the reason is, if you followed the above mentioned steps and consider the tips that we have listed in this blog, you will be able to transfer maximum rankings and credits from the existing website. However, it is important to closely monitor your analytical tools to see the performance of the new domain name for a couple of months, if see sharp declines or continuous decline in rankings and website traffic than you must have done some mistake.
But no need to worry. RSI Concepts is a leading web designing and development company in Dubai, UAE. You can contact us anytime to get our help to repair the damage and we also offer digital marketing services which can help you market your new domain name more effectively. If you want our help or need more information about the subject please feel free to contact us through our Contact Us page or leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get in touch with you soon.
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