Transfer of website to maintain SEO

[casper434]

I am nearly finished building a new wordpress website to replace the old static HTML site which is currently doing very well in SERPs. My old site is currently hosted by a company who owns the site, my domain is registered with a different company and I have the nameservers pointed at Cloudflare. I have built my new site and have it hosted with a different company and I wish to keep the domain name registered with the company it is currently with.Is there an order that I should follow to move from the old site to the new site using my current domain name so that I minimize any impact on SEO. I built the new site with the same URL structure to maintain linking benefit. thanks

[KeriMorgret]

We had a great post about that a few months ago at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/web-site-migration-guide-tips-for-seos that should help you out!

[casper434]

Great article and I have done much of this already. The part that I am missing is the technical steps from my old site to new using the same domain name. Since I have the new site on a test url I will need to get it on the domain that I have my old site on. Just not sure of all of the steps and in what order.

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi Brett,

I assume you want to keep the new hosting? And your domain is still on the test URL? There are a lot of ways to do this. The method below is just one. First you want to transfer your wordpress site to a directory with your new URL.

1. With your new hosting company, you'll set up a new domain (name of the domain you want to host) but don't change any DNS settings or change your nameservers yet.

2. You'll have to transfer all your files to that new domain. This means copying all the files over and adjusting your database settings, if need be.

Couple of guides to help out:
http://www.seo.com/blog/site-migration-cheat-sheet-quickly-easily-move-wordpress-to-a-new-domain/

http://yoast.com/move-wordpress-blog-domain-10-steps/

3. When your files are all set up, you can change your nameservers. There might be some downtime if everything isn't configured right in your wordpress files, so it's best do do this during down time.

If you don't have too much downtime, the SEO impact should be minimal and short-term, at best.

Hope this helps. Best of luck!

[casper434]

thanks Cyrus. I want to keep the current domain and move it from the old host to the new host. Old site stays with the old host - they own it. New site is already with the new host and nearly done residing on a test url that I need to change to the existing domain

Brett