So you’ve worked hard to build your domain (www.Example.com) but now you need to change your domain (www.MyNewExample.com). You’ve earned ranking with Google and other search engines with content on your www.example.com site, and you want that rank to automatically carry over to your new site. Is that even possible? The short answer is “No.” BUT there are some key steps that can be taken to carry over a lot of rank so that you are not starting over from scratch.

Moving from one house to another house is never easy or fun, but if you properly prepare, the transition can be made smoother. And if you label everything carefully when you’re packing, when you get to the new house everything will be unpacked easily and put in it’s proper place. Moving a website to a new home is very similar.

Here are some tips to help make a smooth transition to the new domain. First, you need to set up 301 redirects for every single page, post and link. You want to set the 301 to link to a specific page on your new domain.  Do not set them all to simply redirect to the new homepage (MyNewExample.com).  Set the 301 to go to a very comparable page on your new domain. If that page does not exist, it’s probably worth creating. I don’t think it’s a big deal if a few of the 301 redirects point to the same place on your new domain, but try to make it as much of a 1:1 transfer as possible. If you’re using WordPress, a great redirection plugin is called Redirection by John Godley.

You’ll probably want to plan on keeping your current domain (www.Example.com) up for 120 days or so. This will give ample time for all the 301 redirects to really take root. Once all of your 301s are set up, sign in to Google Webmaster Tools and fill out a Change of Address Form. It’s under the Site Configuration section of your Dashboard.

One other thing I would suggest is contacting the people that link to your current domain (www.Example.com). You can find a list of links to your site in the Google Webmaster Tools dashboard too. Look through it, and if you see a lot of links from a site, contact them. Thank them for linking to your site and let them know that you want to make sure they’re providing the most up-to-date and accurate info to their visitors, and tell them what the new link should be. They just need to change their URLs to the new one. No 301 is necessary.

One final suggestion. Create new content on your new domain that is rich with the keywords you want to rank for. The fresh content will go a long way to giving you the rank you need. This is similar to what I suggested above, but make this content fresh and unique from the content you copied over from your current site. This step is not necessary if you did a fresh rewrite of the content you bring over from your current site. But if you do a straight copy of the content, make sure you write some fresh stuff too.

Good luck with your move!