Moving from one URL ‘address’ to another in cyberspace avoids many of the perils of a brick and mortar move – no risk of strained muscles or broken glassware – but it comes with its own set of problems.
The biggest? Maintaining your sales from organic traffic during the website migration process.
When done wrong, a shoddy domain name migration can cost you some (or all) of your organic search engine traffic and the sales that would have resulted from the traffic.
The good news is that it is possible to move your eCommerce website to a new domain while mitigating losses in traffic and sales.
In this article, we’ll dive into the potential pitfalls of a site migration gone wrong (including how to calculate your potential risk), plus the steps you can take before, during and after the move to maintain organic search engine traffic.
Let’s get started.
How to Migrate a Domain Name
We recently moved a large online shoe retailer to a new domain because they purchased a shorter .com domain that better represented their brand.
This retailer makes millions of dollars annually from organic search engine traffic, so the risk of an improper site migration was huge.
Our mission: to move the website’s content to the new domain, so Google would stop showing pages from the old domain and start showing pages from the new domain.
The biggest potential danger when moving from one domain to another is maintaining your sales from organic traffic during the transition. If your website drops in the rankings for important keywords or Google removes content that it can no longer find ‘bookmarked’ in its index, your organic traffic can take a big hit. And less traffic translates to less sales.
Know your risk. Before you move your website to a new domain, calculate the total revenue you generate from organic search traffic. That number is what you potentially stand to lose in your domain name migration.
Website Redesigns vs Domain Name Changes
While the focus of this article is on the impact a domain name change can have on your organic traffic, it’s worth noting that a website redesign can also threaten your organic traffic.
What is a Website Redesign?
A website redesign is when a website’s page layout and design change, but the content and, most importantly, the URLs stay the same. So even though the site looks completely different, the information that’s on the website doesn’t.
In “SEO terms”; the address and information that Google has ‘bookmarked’ stay the same.
It’s the equivalent of giving a brick and mortar store a fresh coat of paint and some new lighting, but keeping the same products and location.
With a domain name change, it’s the opposite.
What is a Website Domain Change?
A Website Domain Change is when the domain name – the first part of the URL or online ‘address’ – changes. For example, shoepoint.com becomes shoes.com. The website design and content, on the other hand, stay the same.
The URL paths after the domain name stay the same, as well. So, shoepoint.com/product/redshoe becomes shoes.com/product/redshoe.
To better understand what’s involved in a domain name change, let’s look at the role of URLs and domain names.
What is a URL?
While the domain name is the commonly understood name of a website, a URL is the web address for a specific page on your website. Your web browser uses URLs to fetch pages from your favorite brand’s web server. It’s the virtual version of a brick and mortar address.
What’s a URL slug?
The URL slug is the last part of a URL and it is unique to every page on a given domain. For example, on a URL “https://www.justfab.com/shoes/ankle-boots”, “/ankle-boots” would be the URL slug.
What’s a URL path?
A URL path is the unique part of the URL that indicates the website’s hierarchy, as well as which content should be loaded by the server. Visually, the URL path is the part of your URL before parameters, and after your domain extension.
For example, on a URL “https://www.justfab.com/shoes/ankle-boots?color=red”, “/shoes/ankle-boots” would be the URL path.
What is a Domain?
In the simplest terms, what we call a domain is a combination of the unique identifying name of your website + your domain extension, excluding the URL parameters after the extension, the “www” prefix, and the HTTPS protocol indicator.
For example, https://www.justfab.com/ankle-boots is the URL, or exact address, of the ankle boots collection page on justfab.com. The domain name is justfab.com.
If the owners of justfab.com wanted to move their website to fab.com, it would be the equivalent of changing their business name and address. They would have to be careful to avoid losing sales from organic traffic, because there’s a lot that can go wrong during a site migration.
What can go wrong during a site migration?
Just as with a real-world move, a lot of things can go wrong with a website’s ‘move’ to another virtual address. This is a shortlist of the potential pitfalls of an improper transition to a new domain name.
1. You can lose the benefits of links to your old domain
When someone links to your website – think guest posts, product reviews, social media shares, and more – search engines see these links as endorsements of your website and your content. The more links you have from high-quality, authoritative websites, the more likely your pages will appear at the top of search results. It can take months or years to build a strong list of backlinks. An improper site migration can wipe out those efforts.
2. You can lose rankings and organic traffic for your high-value keywords
Your position in the search results is largely driven by your use of relevant keywords in your product and collection pages. Google uses these keywords to understand what your page is about and match it up with searcher queries. High-value or ‘money’ keywords are the keywords and phrases in your copy that attract high-quality traffic that converts into sales. Poorly executed site migrations can cause you to lose your rankings for those money keywords, leading to a drop in organic traffic and sales.
3. Pages can disappear from Google’s index
If you don’t redirect your pages correctly, they could disappear from Google’s index. Google’s index is what the search algorithms refer to when looking for pages to match up with user’s search queries. Once a page disappears from Google’s index, Google will stop sending traffic to that page.
4. Duplicate content that hurts your search traffic
After a site migration, search engines will sometimes find the same content exists on both your website’s old and new domain. The duplicate content is confusing for search engines. It forces them to choose which version of the content to include in their index. If they choose the page on your old domain, which is likely because your old website was more established, then the pages on your new domain won’t appear in search results.
5. ‘Page not found’ error messages
Failure to properly migrate your site won’t just confuse search engines – it’ll frustrate your potential visitors, too. Google will frequently display your old website in search results, sending traffic that way even after the site disappears. Since the pages don’t exist anymore, visitors will get a ‘Page not found’ message.
6. Lost sales
We mentioned the importance of knowing the potential risk of a site migration earlier and it warrants repeating. Before moving forward with a domain name change, calculate the total revenue you generate from organic search traffic. That number is what you potentially stand to lose if you move your site to a new domain name and the transition is executed poorly.
7. Broken analytics reports
Analytics reports are one of the cornerstones of understanding your site’s health and performance on a granular level. They enable you to track your organic traffic and revenue. But, if you don’t update your Google Analytics configuration correctly during your site migration, you could break your reports and miss out on important data.
8. Lost access to Google Search Console data
If you don’t migrate your site to its new domain name correctly, analytic reports aren’t the only invaluable tool you could lose access to. You could also lose access to your Google Search Console data. The list of potential site migration disasters if hefty, but don’t lose hope. Preparation is at the core of every successful site migration.
Website Domain Migration SEO Checklist – Before
Before you swear off domain migrations forever, it’s important to realize there’s a way to do them correctly. With some planning and preparation, you can avoid post-move crises and dips in organic traffic.
1. Research the past of a Domain before Buying it
A quick search on archive.org for your new domain name will let you know if the domain may have been flagged for containing malicious or inappropriate content in the past.It’s difficult to remove your name from internet blacklists, so no matter how catchy that new domain name is, avoid names that used to contain shoddy or adult content in the past.
2. Download your Pre-Migration Performance Data
Before you transition your site to the new domain name, record some vital statistics for your website from the Search Console account: number of indexed URLs, top keywords, number of website linking to your site, etc. This information will be used to measure the health and performance of your website on the new domain. Important: While there are numerous tools for tracking your site’s data, you want to get your data directly from Google. Other tools are less accurate due to their data lag. The Google Search Console accounts for your site’s old domain and new domain are your best, most accurate sources of information during the transition to the new domain name.
3. Maintain the same URL paths
To minimize redirecting confusion, it’s best if you don’t change the URLs while transitioning to the new domain. Going back to our earlier example, shoepoint.com/product/redshoe should become shoes.com/product/redshoe, not shoes.com/product/fieryfurycollectionshoe.
4. Don’t do a Redesign at the Same Time as a Domain Migration
If you’re planning to redesign your website as part of the move to the new domain name, do it separately. We recommend migrating your site to the new domain and then waiting at least 2-3 weeks to launch your redesign.
Once you’ve laid the groundwork for a successful site migration, you’re ready to kick-start the transition to the new domain name.
Website Domain Migration SEO Checklist – After
Strong preparation requires equally strong follow-through to be effective. These frequently overlooked steps of a site migration will streamline the move to your new domain name.
1. Redirect every URL on your old domain to the corresponding URL on the new website
Want to automatically send visitors who navigate to a URL on your old website to the same page on your new website? (Hint: Yes, you do.) Then make sure your developer uses a 301 redirect for the page, not a 302 redirect. 302 redirects tell search engines that a page’s move is temporary, while 301 redirects indicate the change is permanent, prompting search engines to update their indexes.
2. Create two Search Console accounts
You’ll need two Search Console accounts to monitor the transition: one for the old domain and one for the new domain. From these accounts, you can track the number of clicks the old website and new website are receiving. (This information will be in the Search Analytics report). After 3-6 weeks, you should see the clicks to the old website drop to zero and the clicks to the new website increase accordingly.
3. Update the XML sitemap
Remember to update your website’s XML sitemap to include your new URLs with the new domain. Or ask your developer to help with the update. This tells Google which pages you think should be crawled and indexed as potential search results.
Bonus: What’s the Best Domain Name for an eCommerce Website?
The best domain name for an eCommerce website is a combination of your business name + the .com domain extension. One in three people say that .com domains are more memorable than other domains, likely because .com domains also make up over 53% of all domains.
If the .com version of your website is taken, consider picking a more descriptive domain extension, like .shop or .store.
What a successful domain name move looks like
When we moved our client’s online shoe store to their new domain name, we followed an intricate 20+ step procedure to transition the website properly. This included extensive preparation for the transition, carefully planned and executed activities on the day of the transition and comprehensive monitoring afterwards to detect and troubleshoot any issues that arose.
The result? When we checked the Search Console accounts and analytics for our client’s website, we found:
- There was no negative impact on the organic traffic
- It took just 2 months for every URL on the new domain to get indexed, or recorded and ‘filed’ away by Google’s search bots
- After only 5 months, 99% of the URLs on the old domain disappeared from Google’s index in Search Console
- Sales from organic traffic were steady during the change
So, if you’re planning a site migration, it’s important to make sure you understand the risks, and be prepared to see at least some immediate changes in performance when a site is migrated.
And while risks will still exist, trust that, with careful planning and expert guidance, even the most robust eCommerce site can be successfully migrated to a new domain name without a significant, negative impact on organic traffic and sales.
Let Fire&Spark help make your site migration successful—talk to a digital strategist today for a free consultation & SEO opportunity analysis!
