A few times in your career, you may need to work on a re-branding effort or merger or acquisition, which usually\u00a0means a domain name change. At the onset, the change can seem very intimidating and daunting, simply because there are so many things that could go wrong or overlooked.\u00a0 Ultimately, it means that website that you or your team have\u00a0worked long and hard to optimize, rank, and grow can be undone. \u00a0Domain name changes can be a major source of potential stress, but it doesn’t have to be. Thankfully we have a myriad to tools at our disposal as marketers to change\u00a0from one domain to another domain name and preserve our rankings.<\/p>\n
I’ve assembled a list of things that I’ve used across my career to transition domain names and retain rankings as much as possible and quickly get your site re-indexed properly.<\/p>\n
This checklist is a great place to start – however,\u00a0each situation is unique and different and will require different planning. Use this as a jumping off point to brainstorm how domain name changes can affect your organization.<\/p><\/div>\n
Prep Work & Planning<\/strong><\/p>\n Post-Change<\/strong><\/p>\n Obviously, you’ll want to get started on planning for the domain name change.\u00a0 It’s important to document an action plan and think through not only the domain change will affect your company, but also how the domain name change will affect things beyond rankings – that’s being a proactive leader.\u00a0 Here are some items to get you started.<\/p>\n Is this change something your customers should be aware of beforehand?\u00a0 If so, consider putting a notice on your existing site to prep them.\u00a0 Imagine yourself as a client – you visit a known site of a vendor, and then one day are then redirected to a new site with a new domain name without notice.\u00a0 Would you feel concerned? Confused? Perhaps a little hesitant?\u00a0 It’s always best to let the people who give you money know about a future change if possible.<\/p>\n If the change is something that must be kept secret or private, you’ll want to institute a heavy news and PR blitz (see below).\u00a0 You’ll want to get the word out so that customers can know as quickly as possible, from a variety of sources, that the redirect they are hitting is legitimate.<\/p>\n Now is a good time to take inventory of your existing site’s URLs and infrastructure.\u00a0 This means that you’ll either need to crawl your site, or get a list of all URL’s from something like an XML sitemap.\u00a0 The goal here is to take stock of all URL’s that you have.<\/p>\n If the domain name change will include a new design and changes in your URL structure (as they can often), then you’ll want to consider where the existing URL’s should redirect to – this may take a generous\u00a0amount of planning time.<\/p>\n My favorite tool for planning URL redirects is a spreadsheet – it’s stupid simple to set up, easy to see that everything is accounted for, and that nothing is missed.<\/p><\/div>\n Depending on how much your hosting is set up, you will have to implement redirects differently.<\/p>\n For example, if you use WordPress you can use the Redirection plugin to create and import redirects.\u00a0Perhaps the most common way is with an .htaccess file. \u00a0Using an .htaccess file, you’ll want to end up with a list of all URL redirects that will be formatted like this<\/p>\n If your domain name change doesn’t include a new site or structure, that’s great – most likely all URL redirects can be handled with a simple rewrite rule.\u00a0 An example .htaccess rule would be:<\/p>\n There are many more things that can be done using rewrite rules – these should cover most of what is needed.<\/p>\n Be mindful of any redirects that are in place on the site you are replacing – you will need to update those redirects as well with their new location. \u00a0Search Engines do not like to incur multiple 301s.<\/p><\/div>\n While you are considering the domain name change, you’ll want to consider any third party services that may rely on your site.\u00a0 Here are some things that I have encountered:<\/p>\n In this moment, future-you just pulled the trigger.\u00a0 Now is when the panic sets in, right?\u00a0 It’s OK, you’ve planned this out – now you just need to work the plan that past-you put in place.\u00a0 You go, past-you.\u00a0 Here’s your post-change gameplan.<\/p>\n If your site doesn’t have any new structure or URL’s and is simply a domain name change, canonical tags are a great way to ensure that any URL’s are quickly indexed with the new domain name.\u00a0 Canonical tags go in the <head> of any page, and tell a search engine, “No matter how you got here, no matter what URL you have this previously indexed for – this defined URL is the real URL that should be indexed and ignore any others”.<\/p>\n Here is an example canonical tag:<\/p>\n Letting the search engines know that you have a new site is important.\u00a0 Google has a special place in it’s Webmaster Tools that helps you change your domain name.<\/p>\n\n
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Prep Work & Planning<\/h2>\n
Let Customers Know<\/h3>\n
URL Redirects<\/h3>\n
Setting Up Your Redirects<\/h4>\n
Redirect 301 \/oldpage http:\/\/www.yournewdomain.com\/newpage<\/pre>\n
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourolddomain.com [NC,OR]\r\nRewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.yourolddomain.com [NC]\r\nRewriteRule ^(.*)$ http:\/\/www.yournewdomain.com\/$1 [L,R=301,NC\r\n<\/pre>\nThird Party Services<\/h3>\n
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Post-Change<\/h2>\n
Canonical Tags<\/h3>\n
<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.yournewdomain.com\/somepage\/\" \/><\/pre>\n
Webmaster Tools<\/h3>\n