Move WordPress Site to New Domain:- Moving a WordPress site to a new domain can be difficult task especially when your website is performing well at SERPs. So it is very important for website owners to migrate their website to different domain without hampering the hard-earned search engine rankings and SEO efforts. We are happy to tell you that with careful planning and execution, you can successfully Move WordPress Site to New Domain while preserving website’s SEO factors and ranking on search engine result pages. In this guide, we’ll talk about step-by-step process of moving your WordPress site to a different domain without affecting its SEO factors.
Why There is Need to Move WordPress Site to New Domain
There are many reasons behind the migration of wordpress website to another domain. Sometimes websites owner move their website to new domain because the new domain is more authoritative than the older domain, sometimes the old domain is not reflecting the brand identity of the business, etc. Here we are sharing few important reasons of moving wordpress website to new domain-
- Rebranding: When a website undergoes to a rebranding phase, for better business opportunities then it becomes important to switch to a domain that better reflects new brand identity of the website. so that audience can relate with the domain and content of that website.
- Domain Name Improvement: Sometime website owners realized that their current domain name is not as effective as they thought initially. So for conveying website’s purpose effectively to attract target audience, it becomes important to move to a more suitable domain that could improve website’s overall user experiance.
- Business Expansion: If the business of the website owner is expanding into new markets or offering new products or services, than it is profitable to use a new domain that is more relevant to those new products and services or target audiences.
- Domain Name Issues: A sometimes Domain name comes with various issues like spammy backlinks, penalties from search engines, or negative associations. Therefore Moving wordpress website to a new domain can help in a fresh start without carrying over any potential negative issues.
- Legal or Copyright Reasons: Sometime to avoid avoid legal complications, legal issues or copyright disputes; it becomes necessary to migrate your website from old domain to new domain.
- Domain Acquisition: It is a right decision to Move WordPress Site to New Domain in case you have acquired a better domain name that you want to use for your website.
- Geographic or Language Targeting: If you are expanding your website to cater to a specific geographic region or language then it is beneficial to relocate to new domain name that relates better with the audience of that area.
- Server or Hosting Change: Sometimes, server of hosting provider is not providing you with promised features and facilities; therefore it is important to migrate to new domain for better uptime and user experience.
Important Things to Remember Before Moving WordPress Site to New Domain
There are several important things that you can take care for seamless website migration without hampering the SEO factors and web ranking of you website. You should check the below mentioned points before migrating your website.
- Backup Your Website– First of all before making any changes, you should create a complete backup of your existing website which includes your database, files, themes, plugins, and media files. Backing up your website’s precious data will help you in data recovery in any unwanted case of data loss. We advise you to a reliable backup plugin or your hosting control panel.
- Choose a New Domain– Select a new and domain name which is relates with the content and purpose of your website and also keep in mind that changing domains can cause a temporary dip in SEO rankings and web traffic.
- Patience and Expectations– Be patient and understand that there will be temporary fluctuations in SEO rankings and dip in web traffic after the migration of website to new domain. SEO and web traffic will take time to perform and integrate with new domain.
- 301 Redirects– Set up a permanent 301 redirects from your old URLs to the new URLs. This will ensures that your website’s visitors and search engines are directed towards the right pages on the new domain.
- Avoid Peak Traffic Times– We advise you to choose the time of the migration when your website experiences lower traffic especially in night. This will help to reduce the risk of disruptions to your visitors and allows you to easily resolve issues that can happen, without affecting a large audience.
- Content Audit– It is important to review your website’s content and identify any outdated or irrelevant materials. This is an opportunity to clean up all the content of your website before migrating to the new domain.
How to Move WordPress Site to New Domain
Moving WordPress website from old domain to new domain requires few steps, you need to implements these steps carefully to avoid losing SEO factors and SERPs ranking. Here we are sharing detailed procedure of migrating wordpress website to new domain.
Create Backup for WordPress Website with Duplicator Plugin
Firstly create a backup for your website with wordpress duplicator plugin. Keeping a Back up of website is very important because you can use this backup to create a duplicate copy of your website. so that you can upload this duplicate copy of your website’s data to the new domain. Back up of the website’s data also help you in any unwanted issues during migrating website from old domain to new domain.
Process of Creating Website’s Backup using Duplicator Plugin
- Firstly install and activate duplicator pluging from the wordpress dashboard.
- When Duplicator plugin is activated it will start showing on your wordpress dashboard.
- Now click on Duplicator Packages tab.
- In the duplicator packages ALL Screen option click on ‘Create New’ Tab.
- Now give a name to your new backup as per your convenience and click on Next tab.
- After clicking in NEXT tab, duplicator will starts scanning your website completely.
- After scanning of website click on ‘Build’ tab.
- The Backup will take time as per the size of your content.
- After sucessful creation of backup, click on One-click download option.
- This one-click download option will automatically downloads both backup and installer.php file to your device.
- The installer.php file is used to restore old domain’s backup to the new domain.
Now Create a New Database with cPanel for Your New Domain
We need a database on our new domain to upload the backup files of the old domain. If you don’t have a database of your new domain, you need to create it by login into your cPanel account. Here is step by step procedure of creating a new database by using cPanel.
- Firstly Log into your web hosting account using your user name and password
- The homepage will appear on your screen, on the homepage go to the cPanel main menu.
- In the cPanel, select the MYSQL database which is shown under the database tab.
- Now Under the ‘Create New Database’ Tab, Create a new database and name it for your future convenience.
- After creating a new database, go to the Add a new User tab and click on it
- After clicking it, enter a user name and password and click on ‘create user’ option. Now you are the new user to modify the database. Save this username and password for future use case.
- Now scroll down a little bit and you will find a ‘Add a User to Database’ option, click on it
- After clicking, choose the newly created Database and user and add them by clicking on ‘ADD’ Tab.
- Now under the Manage User Privileges screen click and put a tick/check mark on ALL PRIVILEGES box available. This will give you full access to the database.
- Lastly click on ‘Make Changes’ tab.
Upload the Duplicator Backup File on the New Domain Database
Now it’s time to upload the entire old domain’s backup file in the database of new domain. The Steps to upload backup file are as follows
- In the cPanel navigate the ‘Files Tab’
- Under the File option a ‘File Manager’ tab is showing, click on it.
- In the file manager directory, select the ‘Document Root For’ option, also select new domain from the dropdown menu and click on Go tab
- Now clic ‘Upload’ tab from the top toolbar
- Now Upload the site backup and installer file and click on next tab
- Now enter the name of database, and access the database by entering username and password and click on next tab
- After clicking, the duplicator wizard will enter new domain name automatically in the URL field.
- Now click and save Permalinks and test run your website and review it.
Apply 301 Redirect and Redirect Website From Old Domain to New
Now you have to implement the 301 permanent redirects from the old domain to the corresponding pages on the new domain. You can also use plugin like “Redirection” or add redirects to your .htaccess file. Redirecting your website will help to divert your audience towards the new domain.
Update Internal Links and Media
For better user experience, update the internal links of your content. Now the internal links should point the audience towards the new domain. You can use a search and replace tool or a plugin update these links. If your media URLs also contain the old domain, you need to update them to the new domain using a plugin or a database query.
Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools
Notify Search Engines of the domain change. It is advisable to add and verify the new domain in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Submit a updated sitemap to help search engines to discover and verify your new URLs.
Monitor Crawl Errors
You should check for web crawl errors regularly and if any issues arise while website migration, fix those issue as soon as possible.
Monitor and Maintain
Monitor Rankings and Traffic by Keeping a close eye on your SEO rankings and website traffic after the domain migration. Don’t get worried about dip in web traffic and SEO because it is normal to experience temporary fluctuations and they will stabilize over the time.
Fix Issues Actively on time
If you notice a significant drop in rankings or encounter any SEO-related issues, address them promptly. Double-check for broken links, missing images, or other problems
Conclusion
Process to Move WordPress Site to New Domain with SEO requires careful planning and execution, especially when it comes to preserving SEO and web ranking. We hope with the help of this guide, you can successfully migrate your website to a new domain by minimizing the impact on your search engine rankings. Visit our website regularly for more digital marketing oriented articles.