As your website grows and changes, you may find that its existing domain name no longer suits your needs. Although changing your domain is simple, it can have a negative effect on your site’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) if you’re not careful.

SEO plays a major role in the success of your website, particularly when it comes to visibility and traffic. Fortunately, there are ways to switch your domain name without any lasting effects. This means you can make the change, and still continue to rank highly in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

In this post, we’ll briefly discuss the importance of SEO, and then explain how to switch your domain without damaging your site’s rankings. Let’s get started!

Step 1: Backup Your Site

If you using Managed WordPress Hosting or TDWS CloudSites it is extremely easy to manage backup with us! When you host with TD Web Services, no need for any complicated plugins or anything.

TDWS Clients are able to create a backup in the Backup Manager. This allows customers to differentiate between the backups they created by themselves and technical backups of their subscription. The technical backups happen when TDWS Support back up customer subscriptions as a part of a larger backup. For example, when the TDWS Support creates a server-level backup, all customer subscriptions are backed up as well, and they are displayed to the customers as subscription backups created by the System Administrator.

Step 2: Transfer Your Site to Its New Domain

There are multiple ways to transfer your site to new domain.

• Automated Transfer via TDWS WordPress Manager
• Manual Transfer

Automated Transfer using WordPress Manager

WordPress migration has never been simpler.

Manual Transfer

We have covered this section in detail in our Previous Post: How to Transfer WordPress Site to a New Domain

Step 3: Inform Google About the Change

Now that you’ve moved your site to its new domain, you’ll need to notify Google of the change. This will help Google find your site’s new location quickly, and continue to display it within search results. You can begin this process by adding your new domain name to Google Search Console.

We also recommend 301 Redirect using .htaccess from OLD domain to new domain. 301 Redirect will inform Google Bots that your domain has shifted to a new one. Using 301 redirect you will be able to retain all your SEO Rankings.

To setup a 301 permanent redirect, FTP/SFTP to your server and add the code below at the top of WordPress’ .htaccess file.

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^oldsite.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.oldsite.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://newsite.com/$1 [L,R=301,NC]

The Easy Way Out

If you are a TD Web Services clients, just open a ticket with us and we will migrate you in for FREE. Not only that you can be rest assured that your Website will be much faster and better with features like HTTP/2, 1 GBPS Port Speed, Super Fast PHP 7.3 with FPM, NginX Caching. The performance is remarkable. Let TD Web Services Manage your WordPress for you. Get your Managed WordPress Hosting Today.