How to move a website to a new domain
LightSEO · Technical SEO
How to move a website to a new domain
Changing a domain is the riskiest technical operation. It can be done without losses, but a mistake here costs months of recovery.
301
page-by-page redirect
6 months
minimum to keep redirects
Procedure
How to move
1
Record the current state
A list of all URLs with traffic and rankings – before any work begins.
2
Prepare the new site completely
It must be ready and closed to indexing until the moment of the switch.
3
Set up page-by-page redirects
Each old URL leads to its exact counterpart instead of the homepage.
4
Notify the search engine
The Change of Address tool in Search Console and an updated sitemap.
After
What to do next
Keep the redirects for at least six months. Better yet – for years. Removing them means losing all links to the old URLs.
Update external mentions. Social media, directories, maps, partner websites – everything you control.
Check for errors daily for the first two weeks. Search Console will show URLs that return 404 or got stuck in a redirect loop.
Reality
What to expect
There will be a dip. This is normal: the search engine needs to re-evaluate the new domain. The only question is how long it lasts.
Without redirects, the dip becomes permanent. You are essentially launching a new website from scratch.
Do not change your domain without a strong reason. Rebranding is a reason. "I want something shorter" is not.
Planning a move to a new domain?
We will handle the migration with a redirect map and monitor how your rankings recover.
