If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know that I did a domain name change last December from OVBlogger.com, which had absolutely NOTHING to do with my interests and certainly didn’t reflect that this blog is primarily an SEO blog. I throw some blogging stuff in, but really… SEO is about everything we do online, eh?
- Image via Wikipedia
But I digress. People often ask me what to do to assure that their site will maintain its listings and still get the traffic it’s used to if they change their domain. It’s not really 100% foolproof, so your mileage may vary, but here’s what I did.
First, I went to Google Webmaster Tools, and in “Site Configuration” went to “Change of Address.” The first thing Google gives you is a primer on doing this: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=83105&hl=en
Then, you have to redirect all of the traffic to your old domain to your new one, using 301 (permanent) redirects and you can do that by redirecting your entire domain at your web hosting account. Mod Rewrite is probably more effective, and it looks like this:
<–start rewrite engine code–>
# Send traffic from ovblogger.com to theseonewsblog.com
RewriteEngine on
# Pass through google verification files as-is
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f
RewriteRule ^(google.*)$ $1 [L]
# Domain redirect
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^ovblogger.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^ovblogger.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.theseonewsblog.com/$1 [R=301,L]
# Redirect non-www to www
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.theseonewsblog.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.theseonewsblog.com/$1 [L,R=301]
# Redirect index.html to /
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} /index.(php|html|htm) HTTP
RewriteRule (.*)index.(php|html|htm)$ /$1 [R=301,L]
<– end rewrite engine code –>
This code should be added to your .htaccess file for the old domain. (Supply the appropriate domains in the coding.)
The third step is to add your new domain to Webmaster Tools and VERIFY ownership with either an HTML file or a Meta tag.
And the last step is to provide Google with the new domain.
One thing they also recommend is that you submit a sitemap for the new site, and periodically come back to Webmaster Tools to make sure your new domain is being crawled.
As I said, it helped me to do all of these things. I noticed a slight slowdown in traffic at first, but let’s say within a month, everything was pretty much back to normal.
If it makes sense to keep your old domain, do that. It’s the only sure way that you’ll keep all of your listings. But if you can’t, you can’t.
Also be sure that any domain you buy wasn’t a “bad neighborhood” domain. You could have a lot more trouble getting that one to work out as well.
