So you’re looking to change your domain name. There are plenty of reasons why this might be the case. Maybe you’re rebranding your website or looking to switch to a more secure, optimized domain name that boosts your search ranking. Maybe you've outgrown your eCommerce platform provider and are looking for better performance through another host. You may be merging with another brand or have a name that conflicts with another website’s intellectual property.
Regardless of the motivation, migrating your domain name can be tricky if you want to preserve and maintain web traffic data and search engine optimization. Changing domain names requires planning and preparation if you want to do it right. Here are some things to consider before you make the switch, especially if you’re moving to a totally new eCommerce platform.
Timing
It’s important to ensure you schedule your domain name change at a time where your website is less likely to have a lot of traffic. Try to schedule it for the night time, or any time when your website has the least traffic.
Content Migration
Keep records of all the content on your site, including performance data. Make sure all of your media assets are stored, and use this time to decide what you want to keep and what might need to be left behind.
Check Links
If you have links that lead to external locations, be sure to comb through and check to see that they are working properly. As a best practice, back up all of this data as well.
Analyze Data
It’s important to keep track of data related to website traffic, conversions, and any other metrics related to the performance of your site to compare with the data from your new domain name.
Sitemap
Once you’re ready to start migrating, it can be helpful to create an XML sitemap to help search engines crawl each page of your site for SEO. You can submit the sitemap to Google Search Console. Try to replicate the same URL structure as your previous site to help with SEO.
Redirects
You will have to make sure that all internal links lead to the new site. You can use 301 redirects to do so, which may help with web traffic and SEO.
Content Management Systems and Hosting
Your new host may not be compatible with your content management system. It’s imperative to update your hosting environment settings to verify compatibility with your CMS.
Transfer Content
Now you can start to transfer content and remove content that you don’t want on the new site, make sure to update your email system with the new domain as well to avoid any communication disruptions.
DNS Records
Once you’ve migrated all of your content you can then go to the domain name system registrar control panel to update your domain settings and make sure your new domain name points to the new server’s IP address.
Potential Pitfalls
While there are many ways that you can effectively prepare for changing your domain name, there is still the potential for issues that can have a negative impact on the way your site appears on search results, web traffic, and site performance. When you migrate your domain name, you will temporarily lose traffic as it takes time for search engines to catch on to the new name. Make sure redirects are set up properly to help your users find your new site.
You may see your search engine optimization strategy take a hit as well. In the migration period it’s important to keep an eye out for website malfunctions as well, there are so many issues that can arise when migrating especially if you’re doing a sitewide overhaul. You can prepare for such issues by backing up all of your original site’s data.
What to Do Next
Once your migration is complete, it's time to rigorously monitor SEO, CMS functionality, user experience and indexing. Ensure all of your content survived the transfer and loads properly, conduct user experience testing to make sure the site loads and functions correctly, and check to make sure your website can be crawled by search engines as well. Now it’s time to simply wait.
If you’re planning a domain migration or looking to overhaul your site entirely, it can be a challenge, but the eCommerce experts here at Virid are up for the task. Whether you're trying to tackle a complex eCommerce integration or ready to implement an omnichannel eCommerce experience to help you grow your revenue, we’ve built and optimized hundreds of websites with all of these capabilities and are ready to help yours too. Schedule your consultation today to get started!
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