Best Way To Redirect Domain Name With Minimal SEO Impact [2021]
Redirecting a domain name to another domain is simply pointing your old domain name to the new one. It’s more like an email forwarding to another person.
Literally, its a way of creating a procedure that all the visitors of one domain should be redirected to another domain name. It can be a new domain name or it can be an old domain name as well. All it required to two domains to redirect from one another.
Why Redirect Domain Name?
There are a couple of reasons to conduct a domain name redirection and your reason should be one among this list. Just try to find out all the possible reasons that may cause redirecting a domain to another.
Reasons For Domain Name Redirection
- You may want to create a better version of your brand.
- You may go under some kind of brand name violation (unknowingly) and later want to change it.
- Your previous domain name is too long and just wanna short it out.
- You have recently found an SEO optimized name which is more related to your niche and ability to create a huge impact on traffic.
- Or you might be doing some practice with your website how to migrate from one site to another with minimal SEO impact.
While any one of these can be a reason, the solution is going to be the same for WordPress sites. There are multiple solutions as well and each of them can be fit to solve the problem. Externally, there may be some advance reasons for what you need to take advance steps during redirection.
Few Things To Note
Again for different platforms, redirection procedures can be different. In this post, I will only write about some of the safe processes to apply domain redirection on the WordPress website. But before looking for the procedure you need to make sure that you are going to use all the same resources as posts, page, and images in the new domain.
If you don’t want to use previous resources on the new website then only 301 (permanent) redirect domain name will solve your issue. But, in case you would like to hold all the resources inside the new domain name, migrating the whole website will solve the issue.
# Remember that to migrate website or changing domain name it’s recommended to have both the address on live (available to visitors)
To migrate your WordPress website safely without missing any internal links use “all in one wp migration” plugin.
You can watch this video to follow the steps as well.
Steps To Redirect Domain Name To Another Domain Name
As I have said there are various way to do it, let’s have a look at the safest ways I have ever did it without facing any problem.
1. Migrate Your Website To The New Domain Name
The first part of domain name redirection starts with website migration. The best tool for a safe migration process is all-in-one wp migration. Install the plugin in both domains and activate it. (To use this plugin both domain should have WordPress installed)
Now from the old WordPress site dashboard go to “all in one wp migration” and click on export and select file.
After exporting the website now go to the new domain (WordPress and all in one plugin must install there). Click on Import and select the downloaded file from your local drive and upload. (It may take some time depending on your server speed and file size)
#Use a better hosting for WordPress.
Sometimes, you may get an upload data limitation error but installing this limit extender plugin will solve the issue.
Once the uploading is done you need to login to your WordPress dashboard in the new domain using the old password and user name. After login, change the permalink structure like the previous domain.
This migration will do almost 90% of the work of domain redirection. After migration, all your internal links will be assigned with the new domain name and hence you don’t need to update them manually. It’s a big time saver.
2. Redirect Domain Name With The Help Of [.htaccess] File
Now you need to redirect the domain name of the previous website to the new domain so that whenever someone comes to your old website he will be redirected to the same page on the new website.
It’s really essential because neither you want to show a 404 error to anyone nor take them to a different page with unrelated content. If your old website had lot’s of pages ranked on Google then applying 301 redirections to the same new page is very beneficial. It will save your rankings and produces almost equal traffic to the new domain.
Don’t you think it will bring quick growth to the new website? In my case, it happened. The new website grew even quicker than I thought.
So to apply the redirection using .htaccess file go to your default file manager from hosting or use any FTP clients. Find the .htaccess file. If hidden go to settings and click on SHOW HIDDEN FILES.
Now edit .htaccess and add the following code. (change your site URL in the code)
Redirect 301 / https://newsite.com/
Alternative code:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://newsite.com/$1 [R=301,L]
Both the code should work. If one is not working well try another one.
3. Let Google Know That You Have Migrated To a New Domain
Now, this is a very important step if you want your new website to grow quickly and have very less SEO impact on site due to the migration + redirection. You need to tell Google that “Hey, I just changed my domain name to a new one. So please, prefer to index and rank my contents from the new website instead of the previous domain.”
When you do that Google will get informed and they will start there process to indexing + ranking the new domain for previously published articles or blog posts.
To let Google know, you must have verified both the domain name in your search console. If you don’t know how to verify your domain name check this article.
The change or domain or URL tool is not available in the new version of webmaster tool. You need to access the old version of Google webmaster. It’s easy to access, all you have to select the “old version” on the left bottom of the webmaster dashboard.
In the old version click on the gear icon on the top right corner and select “change of address“
Now provide the information Google is asking from you and click on submit. Once done they will start the procedure to change your domain records in their database.
For 3-4 days your old domain ranking may disappear from search engine but don’t worry all your ranking will be regained with your new fresh domain name.
Applying these steps to redirect a domain name to a new one is really essential in case of WordPress site and can save a lot of time, energy and effort.
If you have any query regarding this post please don’t hesitate to ask. As I have experienced bad situations of migration and redirection so I can help you more with this. Hope this article help you.
