Thinking of changing your domain? It might not be as easy as just renaming a file. There are some technical checklists that you might need to follow. This technical checklist is highly important for your website’s SEO performance. Below is a list of activities the SEO Experts and Web Development Experts at Digichefs follow while doing a website/domain migration.
While you are migrating your domain, the first thing you need to know is that the organic performance and authority of google you had gained might be lost. To make sure that you get this performance and authority the right way you need to follow the below steps.
These are detailed steps on how you should do a Website Migration.
- Check Your New Domain
- Has it ever been used before, If yes, was it a site that can be harmful if we start associating with the new domain?
- Content is present on the website, was it removed?
- Are the pages still getting indexed?
- Make a backup copy of the current domain
- Making a backup copy will allow the Onsite implementations to be the same as the old ones
- Make a complete list of URLs on your existing domain so we can make the necessary 301 redirect
- Add Canonical tags on the old website and webpages wherever pointing required to the new domain
- Identify backlinks pointing to your old domain address web pages and replace them with the new links (if possible)
- Use Google’s change of address/domain migration tool to begin migration. Here is the link for your reference. https://search.google.com/search-console/settings/change-address
- While testing everything and going live. Once the new domain is live start changing the new domain to possible social accounts
- Ensure there are no broken links on the new website after it goes live. Apply the appropriate 301 redirects if there are any broken links
- Make sure you are also changing the official email address from any possible digital locations such as websites, Social accounts, and GMB profiles
- Make sure you are optimizing the new website through googles page speed optimization guidelines
This is a well-proofed plan that we here at Digichefs follow while we are migrating a domain/website. Let us know if we have missed some steps. Get in touch with us!
