Domain Change, loss of inbound links ...

[jmueller0823]

We're strongly considering a domain name change; this is purely for marketing reasons. We think in the long term, this will be a good thing. I believe we can mitigate the page redirection, branding changes, etc.

My concern are the inbound links: from 200+ domains, 3,000+ links.

So, I guess we can contact each of the top sites linking to us and hope they update our links.  I'm not hopeful.  I believe we'll loose must of the links.

Has anyone been down this road and have experience to share?
What should I expect, worst case? Is there a way to mitigate?

Thanks much.
Jim

[anthonydnelson]

Hi Jim-

If there are any links in your control or from places you have a close relationship with, I would recommend updating those. However, you don't need to worry about updating the rest of the external links.

You simply need to set-up 301 redirects from the old website to the corresponding page on the new website.

oldsite.com/blue-widgets.html-> 301 to newsite.com/blue-widgets

Make sure a 301 redirect is used. Read more about redirects here: http://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection

After making the updates, you will usually see a slight loss in organic traffic that tends to recover after time. Changing websites, replacing old pages with new pages, etc are all common practices on the web. In general the search engines handle them really well when a 301 is in place.

Good luck!

[BlueprintMarketing]

Hi Jim,

Yes you actually have to do quite a bit to keep your site from losing its traction. You will most likely see a drop in rank regardless of how well you do it. The amount of time could be a day to a week if you do it right if you do it wrong it could be until you fix it or regain the links

It is not wise to lose that amount of links it will be like your site is committing suicide. Simply 301 redirect them using the information below if you cannot get the original owner of the site who links to you to link to your new domain.

When done properly you must use all the tools at your disposal to find your back links

Moz open site Explorer

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/

MajesticSEO

http://www.majesticseo.com/

Ahrefs

https://ahrefs.com/

if I were you I would subscribe to the other 2 for one month in order to get the data I needed. Some people use Raven tools because it incorporates MajesticSEO for back links however I do not believe it is as good as actually using MajesticSEO

http://raventools.com/marketing-tools/seo-software/

Sost of what you need is answered in this question below.

http://moz.com/community/q/how-to-keep-old-url-juice-during-site-switch

here is a bigger version of the and photograph if it cannot be seen very well.

http://www.aleydasolis.com/images/seo-website-domain-migration.gif

I strongly recommend buying the tool called screaming frog SEO spider if you're going to be the one doing this

http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/

combine that with the SEER interactive guide on screaming frog and the information in the URL above and you will be in good shape.

http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/screaming-frog-guide

Sincerely,

Thomas

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[ggale]

We just went through this exact same change for marketing reasons. With a combination of 301 redirects and a ton of new content we found our organic dropped significantly on day one but after a period of about two weeks now things have bounced back and in some cases the new content has allowed us to rank better.

Our previous site had tons of outdated code and was not particularly clean. Pages now load much faster, the new look seems to have increased the number of pages per visit as well as time on site. If we had to do it over again tomorrow we certainly would. Sometimes not renovating the site I think costs you more in the long run.

Hope this helps.

Gary