Need A New Domain For An Old Website?
Do you have an existing website with existing content? Does it have stats and is it connected to services like Google Analytics? Can it be done without a huge loss? Below is my story of my switch from one domain to another both on different servers.
Do you have an existing website with existing content? Does it have stats and is it connected to services like Google Analytics? Can it be done without a huge loss? Below is my story of my switch from one domain to another both on different servers.
In 2021 I decided to do just this. I have an existing website that is over 7 years old. The site ranked on Google and I felt that a new shorter domain would better serve the future of the service. Plus, the new domain would be more targeted to my primary niche.
I needed to do this without completely destroying my existing rankings. Plus I needed to restructure a lot of the site in that it was 50 pages of hit or miss content. I reduced the site to just about 7 total pages. Those pages are long with over 2000 words of content, pictures and videos.
Originally all this content was heavy and would not load fast enough without a new server, template, theme and plugins. Today it loads at under 2 seconds and has a collection of videos and images.
The original website was https://AllInclusiveVacationAndTravel.com which is super long and not very targeted. The new domain is https://SandosPromo.com which is much shorter and very targeted.
So here are the issues I addressed in the switching of one domain to another. Note, I had to move 7 years of work the best i could. Stuff like links I had access to needed to be updated to the new link along with a fresh copy of WordPress on a new server.
I took this opportunity to get rid of a slow server at InMotion hosting and upgrade to SiteGround. Note that right after I did all this I switched servers again to a cloud based server. I now have the new site on Cloudways and it loads in seconds on a mobile device.
Some important things to note. Email was previously setup on InMotion Hosting with a forwarder. That needed to be recreated to forward old mail to the new mail address on the new domain.
Also I had Search Console and Google Analytics setup on the site. That also needed to be moved. Search Console makes that easy and has a feature that transfers one sites rank to another. this takes time but immediately shows a message at the top of search console that says the site is moving.
All in all it was a good move and even though there were issues along the way it was worth it. The site is superfast, keyword targeted and got a fresh WordPress and plugins installed.
