How to Change Your Domain Without Losing Your Link Juice?

How to Change Your Domain Without Losing Your Link Juice?

Your website design is outdated, and you know it. A change in the domain can benefit your business, but the roadblock is the question—will the change result in a decline in visitors to the site and affect sales?

The truth is, if you go wrong with the transition process, it sure can. But you can avoid all that and still change your domain while you retain your link juice.

We share the necessary information about SEO juice, the effects of domain change on SEO ranking, and the steps to avoid losing link juice in this article. Let’s begin by understanding what link juice is and how important it is to ensure a good rank on Google.

What is Link Juice?

Search engines recognize it as a recommendation when you link another website to serve as a reference to your website content.

The flow of power from one website to another through backlinks is called the flow of link juice. And the power itself is the link juice or backlink authority.

Link Juice is Essential for Organic Ranking

Every time a website links to yours, it sends a message to the search engine that the web content is of value.

This link juice is the factor that results in the promotion of your website on the search lists. Check the picture below to understand how link juice works to help a website succeed:

Does Domain Change Affect the Flow of Link Juice

Link juice is the equity that passes from one webpage or website to another and may be lost during the domain change. Continue to know how domain change can cause a loss in link juice.

Domain Migration Can Cause Rankings to Fall

As the search engines index your web pages to the old site, it will take time for them to crawl the new website.

Therefore it will take time for the website to recover its lost traffic. The loss of traffic during migration is inevitable, and that’s only part of it, for the loss of link juice is a more significant concern. 

Effects of 301 Redirect on Link Juice

You can transfer 90-99% original site link juice through 301 permanent redirects. However, new domains rank fast, so you can only attribute the rise in ranking to 301 redirects.

Domain History Can Make Matters Worse

Before website migration, check the history of the new domain. Therefore, you could avoid buying a domain with a bad record or spamming website domains with Google penalties. Always crosscheck with the Google Analytics tool for sudden traffic drops.

Save Link Juice During Domain Migration

You may have used 301 permanent redirects and feel domain migration is not hard to do. However, I must warn you that it can be a challenging task and lead to colossal traffic loss if not done correctly. Before you go ahead in modifying your domain, ensure that you take the preliminary steps below:

Preliminary Steps Before Domain Migration

The preliminary investigation before changing the domain must comprise four steps as follows:

• Check if the migration can wait and proceed if you do not have another option but to change to a new URL.
• Choose a suitable name for the domain.
• Wait to make the necessary changes until the domain migration is complete. If you proceed with the changes before domain migration, it will complicate matters if you run into roadblocks.
• Make sure to set the 301 redirects to each new page of the new domain from the corresponding page of the old site.

You can also take help from a professional seo company.

Site Duplication

If you have used a domain for some time, it would have earned page or domain authority. However, If the domain change is total, there is a 100% chance of losing the old domain’s link juice. Here is how you can avoid that:

• The most straightforward way is by updating the existing website
• Get a new website that looks exactly like the old website
• The third one is the most complex, where you get a new website

You can do the above in three easy steps using WordPress as follows:

• Use general settings on WordPress
• Modify the URL and site address
• Modify protocol

 Click on save changes to use the dashboard from the new domain.

Verify if all Links are Updated

After step 1:

1. Complete the process of a site migration to the new URL.
2. Ensure that the process is coordinated with the web developer and hosting provider.
3. Run a series of tests to ensure that all hard-coded and internal links to web content are updated.

It is essential to check the links updates to CSS, media, and Javascript files.

Inclusion of 301 Redirects to Old Websites

Include 301 redirects to ensure the website’s overall performance and avoid the loss of SEO juice. The links from the old site remain active online despite shutting down, and someone can click on them.

When you use 301 redirects from the old site to the relevant pages on the new domain, the domain authority will be transferred to the new site earning more link juice and traffic.

Notify the Change to the Search Engines

After placing the redirects, you can inform Google, Bing, and other search engines about the migration to the new site.

Update the new domain on Google Analytics and add it to Bing Webmaster tools to optimize site tracking of your new website.

Verification and Submission of Sitemap Inside Google Search Console

Become the marketing director and webmaster of the website through its verification via Google Search Console (GSC).

It can also help in communicating with Google and securing a host of information concerning keyword performance and a labyrinth of technical information relating to the site’s indexing and crawling.

Update New Address on Google Search Console

The final step is to update the new URL on GSC. That will transfer all page and domain authority from the old site to the new site. That’s one way of letting the link juice flow from the old to the new site without any loss.

Conclusion

Domain change can result in a bad user experience because of broken links, sitemaps, and robot.txt files or redirects that go wrong.

But that’s not all; it can result in losing link juice detrimental to your ranking. The result is a sudden substantial traffic decline, which you cannot afford after having worked hard to bring your online business to its current position.

Follow the tips in the article, and although you may initially face a decline in traffic, it will be temporary, for, in the long run, it will help your score higher.

Alternatively, you can hire an SEO provider to assist in domain change, for they can help you modify or merge websites without losing link juice.

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