Five Important Considerations When Migrating Your Domain

A lot of businesses contemplate about rebranding for one reason or the other. Generally rebranding is done to ensure that the company revamps its earlier image. However, one of the key features to be kept in mind while rebranding is the effective SEO preservation in order to ensure that the plan of rebranding doesn’t backfire and give conflicting results than intended. So, migrating your domain is one of the key things that have to be handled in a professional and faultless manner. The more skilfully and competently it is handled the better the results.

Well, how many people know that BackRub is the former name of Google. Very few, that means Google has done exceptionally well while changing the domain, so, when you are migrating your domain you too need to keep certain things in mind. The five important considerations when migrating your domain include:

1. Putting Redirects in Place:

One of the foremost and the obvious steps of rebranding are to put the redirects in place which would redirect the users from the older domains to the new pages. The better redirect to be used in this case is 301 which sends a strong message to the web browsers and the search engines regarding migration of the domain, so that the users are redirected to the new page then.

However, redirecting is a cumbersome process and is not as easy as it seems. One certainly needs to brainstorm and find all the effective ways that could help in identifying the pages that needs to be redirected. So, while migrating your domain one should always take help of such tools as Screaming Frog, Xenu Link Sleuth, etc. that are effective in picking up those URLs that attract a heavy traffic. These pages are termed as link juice’ or the pages that have very high rankings. So, while migrating your domain a strenuous effort is required in order to ensure that such link juices’ don’t go unnoticed.

Moreover, in order to avoid any sort of confusion and in order to streamline the process one must always keep a record of the pages that are to be linked. And, once such a list is prepared the mapping procedure must ensue. However, one must ensure that the mapping process is started only when the entire pages have been located since premature mapping can lead to inconsistency as the search engines will find it difficult to understand where the users are to be directed to. And, this confusion and the bifurcation of the traffic will ultimately lead to more harm to the new site as the older site will still be as much live as the new one. So, this precarious condition must be avoided while migrating your domain.

2. Informing Regarding the Change of Address to Bing Webmaster Tools and Google:

The next step to follow after redirecting is informing the Bing Webmaster tools and Google about the change in the address that is being undertaken. So, while migrating your domain you must create sitemap of XML for the latest domain and submit it to Google and Webmaster Tools.

3. Using Social Media Effectively:

Social media is one of the most gripping media right now which holds the attention of everyone. So, while migrating your domain one could definitely use the social media to make an announcement regarding the migration of the domain. Also, it is pertinent to make sure that all the pages with links to social media are redirected to the new domain.

4. Updating the Directories:

While migrating your domain it becomes indispensable to update the directories since the directories are frequently used by both the users as well as the search engines. So, the directories must be updated so that they return the new address.

5. Audit:

One of the fundamental steps that must be followed at the end of migrating your domain is the audit part which should be done in order to ensure that things are working according to the set plan. The tool called Screaming Frog web spider’ is effective in examining the results as it effectively runs the audit of the new and the old site. Check out the definitive guide for SEO audit for website.

CONCLUSION:

So, it is evident that migrating your domain is a process that requires exhaustive preparation and coordination. Things must be planned in advance in to prevent the plan of rebranding from rebounding.