How to change domain name without losing traffic (Case study)
This post is in light of my experience with moving from dailyseoblog.com to dailybloggr.com, so whatever I’m talking about here is pure experience, practicality and substance, no blah blah (like you’ll find elsewhere).
As you might have already known, DailySEOblog.com is no more, and the site changed its name to dailybloggr.com, with a complete revamp. DailySEOblog used to enjoy a traffic of roughly 50,000 visits & 73,000 page views per month on an average.
Most of the traffic was search engine referrals (~65%), with Google.com topping the most referred channel followed by Stumbleupon.com, RSS feeds and Twitter.
Two weeks ago (Feb 14th, 2010), the domain change was live with a 301 redirect on the old one redirecting all the old URLs to dailybloggr.com. And here are the stats since then.
And the referral traffic stats.
Its too early for a comparison but Google still remains the topper in referrals with RSS feeds, Twitter, Tweetmeme and Facebook being the biggest channels.
Alexa too is looking good with a bounce back from the domain change days.
You can clearly see the “transition” around Feb mid when the domain change occurred.
So how did the domain name change and transition happen overnight ?
Well, actually it didn’t happen overnight. Like some of you had noticed (and asked me on Twitter), the 301 redirect had been implemented some 5-7 days prior to the site revamp.
Step 1 – Diverting all the Google traffic via a 301 redirect
I used a htaccess, mod rewrite rule to 301 redirect all the traffic as below.
- All www.dailyseoblog.com } www.dailybloggr.com
- All http://dailyseoblog.com } www.dailybloggr.com
- All http://www.dailyseoblog.com } www.dailybloggr.com
As you might already know, a 301 redirect is the best way to tell search engines that your site has moved permanently. This might not get done immediately, but the idea is to wait and get all the referrals get stuck with a 301 board and once most of this is done, you’re somewhere close to the transition.
( Things to remember while doing a 301 redirect )
- Make sure you pick a static version of the new site (in my case the www version) and create rules so as to move all the other versions of the old domain (wwww, non www and all other versions) to the static version. This is important or things can get worse later on creating one or more versions of the website.
- Make sure you register the new site on Google Webmasters tool and select the static version of the site as your “preferred domain”. Do NOT leave this option unattended.
- Test the 301 from various IPs, if possible from regions. Get some social media help here, if you have friends elsewhere.
Step 2 – Getting the SERPs right, changing all the old listings to the new domain
You won’t have direct control over this, well neither does Google. So all you got to do is do the steps necessary to help the bots do a neat job.
- Submit a new sitemap, via Webmasters central.
- Get some links via good authority web pages, if you can.
- Wait patiently.
It took me around a week to completely get all the old serps to feature the new site name, and even now the transition isn’t complete. You’ll find the dailyseoblog.com stamp on many SERPs listings, but most of this is done, so I assume the rest is under process. Nothing to worry. Also, this is only a minor issue if you care much about the brand. Because anyways if you have the 301s in place, all the search traffic will be properly redirected.
Step 3 – Getting the ball rolling
This is just an additional step you do just to make sure that everything falls in to place. And not all SEOs would be keen on this but I am. What you do is, create some social media friendly content, and “promote” it on the social media channels. Technically it means nothing to an SEO, but this is sort of a “nailing it down” process. I didn’t have much problem here, but sites that have low traffic and lesser google visit frequency might have a problem in speeding up things and getting the major chunk of URLs redirected right. You can leverage on social media here. What you do is get as many traffic as possible from various social media channels, get your content out there, and get as many “human” clicks in. As I’ve mentioned in one of my older posts, search engines these days take into consideration some amount of “social presence” as a factor in deciding the authority of a website. If not everything, they mean something. I mean, if Google doesn’t know about a website but lots of people around the world are flocking around it, wouldn’t Google jump in and get the site indexed ? It should in my opinion. So this step is all about that. You do it, if you can. No obligations.
Step 4 – Getting your settings & tentacles right
By tentacles I mean all the other things you have for your sites presence. RSS feeds, AdSense ads, Bookmarking Options, Custom search result pages, Email subscription options, Email addresses, Twitter feeds etc.
By now, Dailyseoblog has almost all of its SERPs listings moved to the new domain, and the rest of them are on the way. Backlinks to the old domain have been successfully traced back to the new domain. Things are looking good except with some glitches like being unable to change the facebook fan group name, but you got to live with it I guess.
I might have missed mentioning some crucial info here, but feel free to ask if you have anything for me to clear.
Thanks Mani for the detailed post, i doubted about this fact, i mean changing domain affects the traffic.
Very nice post man ! Few months ago, i used to change domain for some of my customer in Vietnam. I just need to use 301 redirect with htaccess setting and use the change domain function in Google webmaster tools. Its also success but it cost few months for Google to reindex. I think i was miss task 3 & 4 in your case study ^^.
Any way, thanks for sharing !
Haha 3 and 4 are bonuses Max, or think of it that way
well written post mani… i was searching for your site with DailySEOblog and came to this domain .. at first i was bit confused whether i forgot domain name or wht
iv always liked you blog design and this one is toooo good .. well done “Aravind Ajith “
When Amit Agarwal moved from blogspot to labnol.org, if I remember it correctly, he registered the domain some months before making the shift and linked it to relevant pages on the blogspot blog like About Page, Search etc. So for some time, the blogspot was a mix of both.
Here is the full story:
http://www.labnol.org/internet/blogging/moving-blog-from-blogger-to-wordpress-with-rss-feeds/1870/
You’re right, that was a different scenario cos he was moving from blogspot to WP. many of the older posts there are still on blogspot.
On a different note, Amit was kind enough to send some links my way soon after the change in domain was made. The more (and better) links you get the better.
Hi Mani
I want more help from your about using 301 redirection from one domain to another. My question are:
What will happen to your website old page?
Do we need to care about the URL’s that we use for our posts?
Will we need to do all linking work for our website internal pages from zero like we did for old domain pages?
Suppose for http://www.dailybloggr.com/2010/03/how-to-change-domain-name-without-losing-traffic-case-study/ page which is now on http://www.dailybloggr.com/, might have previously available on your old domain http://www.DailySEOblog.com/ at http://www.DailySEOblog.com/2010/03/how-to-change-domain-name-without-losing-traffic-case-study/
S how we handle this kind of situation. I’m a bit confused over it.
Hi Anil, here are our questions answered.
1 – What will happen to your website old page?
They just get redirected to the new domain, ultimately they will clear out from the SERPs.
2 – Do we need to care about the URL’s that we use for our posts?
A 301 redirect will automatically change the URLs to the new one. So you don’t have to manually edit them.
3 – Will we need to do all linking work for our website internal pages from zero like we did for old domain pages?
Nope. They will be done automatically provided the 301 is done properly. But the old links will feauture the old domain, and thats not a problem as long as they are redirecting to the new one. Manually editing them is going to be a humungous task for large websites, if you have a small one, Id consider manually editing them as well.
- Reg: the URL – I think you should learn more about 301 redirects. It is the answer to everything. In my htaccess file Ive set a rule that will change any occurence or dailyseoblog.com to dailybloggr.com as I said in the post.
Hope that helped.
My biggest concern with moving to a new domain are the links that currently point to my site:
- Do I have to ask all of my income linking sites to update to my new domain?
- Or is it part of the 301 redirect and I don’t need to worry about other sites linking to my new domain?
Thanks!
Keep it up Mani!
Hi Flavio, The 301 redirects should do the trick, but if you have a log of all your previous links, its good if you can confirm all of that have been mapped to the new domain. In my case, they automatically did. If all the links haven’t yet mapped, you might want to contact the sources, but I doubt if that’s really possible if you have a lot of them.
Thanks, I think I will take the risk.
Excellent post, and very timely
I’m about to this exact task so your experience and clear instructions help very much.
Thank you Mani!
Well explained post! This leaves me with just one question.
How did adsense treat you? Did the ecpm changed massively.
Yes Ranjith, it did.
For better or worse?
Worse Flavio. It has dropped as expected, its not been my focus however, as I mentioned earlier. I’d warn those who rely heavily on AdSense as income if they’re thinking of domain change.
- I was wondering why the change of domain was made.
- Purely branding? (essentially the blog moved away from SEO only posts, right)
- How has adsense performed with the change in domain, Quality score?
- Any of the pillar posts on the blog, have the suffered?
Cheers
And yeah one more thing: since wordpress actually uses absolute URLs more comfortably than relative ones, how did you manage changing them across the website?
PS – I can still see the dailyseoblog links in the seo jargon busters page .. hint adwords
Thanks for letting know Mohak. As I said, a 301 redirect if done right with the correct confirgurations, can make it an easy job, but all the while a small oversight can screw up things as well.
You are welcome Mani… had some more questions as well:
I was wondering why the change of domain was made.
- Purely branding? (essentially the blog moved away from SEO only posts, right)
- How has adsense performed with the change in domain, Quality score?
- Any of the pillar posts on the blog, have the suffered?
Hi,
I have a very successful website that sells branded lingerie for one major high street brand ….. The company is happy for me to sell their products but has asked me to remove their brand name from our domain name.
Most of the keyphrases we rank for include their brand name!!! If I change the domain name is there any way to keep the rankings for those keyphrases???
Please help!!!!
Mike
Hi Mike, You could do it with a 301 redirect as well, but it also depends on how your site/permalinks are configured. If its WP or anyother format that does not follow the dynamic format, it should be comparatively an easier task.
Thank you for your quick response. Do you think changing my domain to something non keyworded will change my google ranking?
Hi Mani . Firstly the fresh Look of your blog is awesome but not Handy as before.No prbs.
Q:Why archive pages are not showing your old layout ,thats a big question to me?
The new layout is on all pages, not the new ones alone.
Why would the Adsense be affected if you are still getting the same amount of search engine traffic? Or is the SE traffic reduced?
This is a great article – I’ve been debating for over a year about switching to a better domain name – I hate having a “dash” and “.ca” since I feel they discourage some internet surfers from picking my site in the SERPs.
Most of my income is Adsense however, so it is troubling when you mention it was affected.
One other question – I would also like to get rid of the date structure in my post links if I switch domains – is that asking too much?
Hi Mani,
I’m new to 301 Redirect. I read on Google Webmaster that it is necessary to use 301 for each and every page.
In your instruction above, it sounds much easier, like you only had to do it once like this in your htaccess file:
========
I used a htaccess, mod rewrite rule to 301 redirect all the traffic as below.
- All http://www.dailyseoblog.com } http://www.dailybloggr.com
- All http://dailyseoblog.com } http://www.dailybloggr.com
- All http://www.dailyseoblog.com } http://www.dailybloggr.com
=========
I’m not familiar with editing HTACCESS files; do I simply use the exact text you’ve used in your example and put that in the Htaccess File?
If not, could you please give an example of what the actual htaccess file contents look like?
Many thanks in advance!
Many thanks for this case study. I’d like to ask some specific questions: I must change the domain name of a big site for branding issues. It has ~15,000,000 pages on hundreds of thousands of sub-domains.
If I move to the new domain name following all the advices (301-redirects, sitemaps, Google Webmaster Tools config, etc.), what loss of traffic should I expect? During how many weeks or months?
Many thanks if you can give me some figures.
Hi Mani,
I have a website (http://riteshsapra.net) where I started writing about Mumbai. But then I got another domain for myself (about 2 weeks back) purely to maintain a blog about Mumbai (http://magicalmumbai.com).
I copied about 100 articls from old site to my new site, and setup 301 redirects on old site. The old articles now get redirected to new site.
But I am facing a peculiar problem… Earlier for a lot of key phrases my old website would be on the first page of google search results, but after redirects, it doesnt seem to show up that often. The new site – I thought would be indexed faster – considering Ive submitted the sitemap too, but when I login to webmaster tools, I see only 14 URLs indexed so far. I’m loosing out on traffic which I used to get earlier on my old site.
What do you think is going wrong and how can I rectify it?
Well i didn’t found anything useful and new thing in the article except detailed 301 redirect.
Will wait for some good article
I changed my domain name of my blogspot.com blog to a custom domain…please tell me what changes I have to make to Google analytics and google webamster tool……earlier i have those for my blogspot.com blog…
Verify the new website on google webmasters and analytics first.
I just went through a domain change with my site and these tips were very useful, took me all night to make all the changes needed. Now just to wait on Google to update my links.
Thank You!
Thanks for this tips.. I just changed my domain and so my previous ranks fall down..
thanks again!
very good analysis
Very good info, I am also thinking to change my domain clickinfolinks.com to new one.
Nicely written and informative. I recently changed my domain name from .info to a .com and lost all Facebook likes, Twitter counts and other social bookmarking counters. Is there any way to retain all those counters?
nice analysis…to the point
Good advice
Well i got a serious problem with my website after i changed www version to non www preferred domain in google webmaster tool. Actually, my website disappeared in the SERP result just in google, but after declaring the non preferred domain name in google webmaster tool, slowly my website appeared again in SERP.
First few month, there was a terrible rise and fall in SERP number for my main keywords by 100′s. It been like 4 months or more my main pages do not appear for the main keywords
. May be i should regenerate a new sitemap ? Also my alexa has dropped a lot .
Any idea ??
Would be unfair to comment without looking into the specifics, but from what it looks like, you have some teething issues. The domain preference should be the same everywhere, on GWT, your site settings, sitemaps etc. But honestly I don’t see a reason for it to disappear because of www or non www version change. If you followed the steps correctly, you should be back soon.
excellent stuff m8 glad your transition went smoothly, I have been wondering bout the best way round switching websites
from one domain to a new one without losing seo value hope this way
works as need to transfer a website without losing rankings.