Moving an existing website to an new domain name can be a risky move if done badly. The major risk is you may lose all the site traffic. New York Times ran the story of nutsonline.com that tried to move/change to a new domain name (nuts.com).
When nutsonline.com tried to shift to nuts.com the new domain name lost 50%-70% traffic for 5 months. Readers and experts were asked to offer advice on how to fix the problem and the following were the solutions on how to shift an old website to new domain name.
How To Successfully Shift Your Website To New Domain Name
Matt Cutts - Google Head of Search Team shared three tips on how to move your old site to a New Domain Name without losing traffic.
Matt Cutts, chief of Google’s Webspam team, said, because Google’s algorithms have to adjust to a new address, sites should expect a temporary drop in traffic immediately after a move, maybe 5 percent. According to Mr. Cutts, nutsonline.com missed three opportunities to minimize his traffic loss. First, Nuts.com had been a parked or content-free site before the sale — meaning, Mr. Cutts said, that “NutsOnline basically moved into what was an abandoned building for the last 10 years.” To prepare users — and Google — for the site’s new purpose, Mr. Cutts said, nutsonline.com should have put up a banner or a simplified site on Nuts.com to announce its new identity several months before moving.
Second, NutsOnline should have moved a small part of the site — a subdirectory or subdomain — to the new address for a month or so before the move to test for problems.
Thirdly, set geographic location of the site.
Hear is a video of Matt Cutts Talking about changing your website domain name.
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