Moving existing domain names without losing search engine rank | How to

How do you move your existing site to a new domain without losing rank?

This is surely a nightmare question for many site owners. How can I move my existing website from www.thisdomain.com to www.thatdomain.com without losing my rank in the search engines?

Note: this probably applies only to situations where you do not need www.thisdomain.com anymore and you rather want www.thatdomain.com.

If you are concerned about your search engine rank or position, then this is something which should not be taken lightly. Before you simply take the plunge you need to be very careful and plan ahead.

So, if I am about to move my site from www.thisdomain.com to www.thatdomain.com (www.thisdomain.com will eventually be forgotten) then I will probably set up both domains on the same host and “park” or “point” the one domain with the other.

To move the content of the site to the new domain, it is suggested that you take the site “as is”, upload it to the new domain and then place 301 redirects on a “one-to-one mapping” basis from the old to the new.

Before you do this, carefully map out the structure of your site. Write down or capture all the folders (folder names or directory names) and the files within those folders so that you do not get confused about what belongs where, especially on large sites.

The most obvious thing when moving a site is to think that you can also do a complete redesign and while we’re at it, restructure the content. Well, it probably isn’t. It may make perfect sense, but it may not help with your ranking at all, unless you really, and I mean, really, know what you’re doing.

It is easy to get confused when you don’t map out your site files and put all the needed 301 redirects in place. You can end up losing your rank for some pages if you’ve neglected or left out a few 301’s.

So as an example: you do not really want to redirect www.thisdomain.com/filename.html to www.thatdomain.com/foldername/filename.php. You probably should redirect www.thisdomain.com/filename.html to www.thatdomain.com/filename.html or perhaps www.thisdomain.com/foldername/filename.php to www.thatdomain.com/foldername/filename.php

Another way to do it is to make the move in stages, folder by folder. This will take time and patience, but the end result will be less loss of rank and less frustration.

You will need to monitor the search engines until you see that the old content (on the old domain) has been de-indexed and the new content (on the new domain) has been indexed. Then only can you think about a complete redesign or restructure of content for your site. Needless to say, then the process starts again as you need to map out the old structure and know how to redirect the old pages to the new.

I hope that you made some sense of what I’m saying, but if you want to hear how to make the switch successfully, tune in to WebProNews or watch the video below and hear what Google’s Vanessa Fox had to say at the SES conference in New York 2007.

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