Why not just use an alias if the only change is a different domain Name?

[stephenfishman]

We are rebranding our store with a new name. We have purchased a NewDomainName.  Can I just make the "Old Domain Name" an alias for the "NewDomainName"?

The site will not change in any other way than having a new logo.  This is an e-commerce site with over 100 categories of artisan made products.  So once we move the site, the old domain will be empty.

Thank you

Stephen

[effectdigital]

It depends what you mean by 'alias'. If you means configuring the old domain to properly 301 redirect all URLs from the old site to the new site (so the old site becomes inaccessible, due to serving as a redirect platform) then yes. If you mean doing something else, like pointing the old domain to your new site - other than by 301 redirects, it's probably not a good idea for SEO!

[stephenfishman]

I checked with my hosting support and they confirmed the alias is a 301.   So I don't need to do anything. redirect-wise.

After the new site is in place. is it worth it to re-work our old .htaccess file so it points to the new site?

Stephen

[BedeFahey]

Hey Stephen,

It depends how your host treats the folders (or URLs) under the main domain when an alias is put in place.

If your host has a system that's smart enough to switch out your old domain for your new domain domain (i.e. all variations of olddomain.com/category/product-5 redirect cleanly to newdomain.com/category/product-5) then you should be in good shape.

My experience with generic hosting companies been that this often isn't the case.

Since you're running an ecomm site and problems translate directly to lost revenue, I'd suggest registering two dummy domains, setting up a test site, and then testing how your host's alias system actually works. Even if that takes 5-10 hours of work, it's probably worth it.

I like the following tools for testing redirects and site crawls:

https://htaccess.madewithlove.be/ for testing htaccess rules individually.

https://www.telerik.com/fiddler for understanding how redirects are working.

http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html for crawling an entire site to check for errors.

Hope this helps!