Changing domain from .net to .se
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Hi Guys,
We have someone in the process of changing our domain from an 11 year old domain to a newer country domain of .se,
He is not a web expert although he knows a lot of things. I am just wondering is there a checklist anywhere of things that are very important here that we should be aware of or he should be implementing so we can just double check that he is/ we are moving in the correct direction.
Thank you for your Help.
Rootin and Tootin xx
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Search Engine Land has a blog that features the 10 most overlooked steps when changing a domain: http://searchengineland.com/changing-domain-names-2016-10-easily-overlooked-steps-can-save-seo-248484
I would definitely check that out. But here is the TL;DR version:
- Contact your hosting provider FIRST
- Verify all versions of the new domain in Google Search Console (GSC)
- Change the setting for WordPress address (and site address)
- Mod_rewrite or ISAPI_Rewrite changes
- Back up your site BEFORE you pull the trigger
- Edit backup plugin settings after the domain name change
- Submit a change of address in Google Search Console (GSC) and Bing Webmaster Tools (BWT)
- Change all internal links
- Edit Google Analytics settings and add annotation(s)
- Apply advanced settings in Google Search Console (GSC)
- Reconnect Google Search Console (GSC) and Google Analytics (GA)
Also, don't forget that domain age plays a role in your domain authority and rankings!
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Hi
Here are few points, I beleive you must have in your mind before you take such action:
- Create a sitemap of your new site, building a hierarchical list of all your site pages (including images, videos and other assets)
- Compile a full list of all the URLs on the current site. This can be done by either crawling the site, extracting from the CMS or exporting URLs receiving traffic from Analytics
- Make sure you have a list of the URLs you’re using in PPC campaigns. Failing to set up redirects on these URLs will result in sending users to broken links and trash your Quality Score
- Compile a list of all the URLs planned for the new site
- Map each individual URL from the current site to new site URLs individually, to be implemented with 301 redirects
- Benchmark the current website’s rankings to measure progress throughout the migration. 20 or 30 keywords is not enough – use several hundred as a bare minimum
- Benchmark organic traffic levels (including visits, bounce rates, conversions) per page on the current website
- Prepare paid ads for keywords that the site ranks well organically for to put live if you run into issues after the site is launched
- Identify the most authoritative links in the site’s backlink profile to be switched to the new URLs once the new website is live
- Register and configure the new domain in Google Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools)
- Generate an XML Sitemap for the new domain
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