Businesses looking to increase their organic website traffic know that to enhance their lead site conversion and visibility, they need to include SEO in their marketing strategy. Most brands understand that SEO is a key factor in a successful branding strategy, especially in the modern times where customers are almost always online looking for products and services.
However, brands and webmasters are constantly challenged in attaining SEO goals due to the ever-changing their rules and regulations of Google and all major search engines with regards to SEO algorithms and rules.
If you’re looking to understand how updating your domain name can affect your SEO, then you’re reading the right article. Here are a couple of pointers you need to understand about how this move will affect your site’s SEO performance.
Domain name change and SEO effects
Here’s what’s clear: Changing your domain will impact your SEO success and long-term strategy. Most website owners are hesitant about moving to a new domain due to different understandable concerns. One is if the website is performing well beforehand, a domain change can potentially negatively impact rankings as well as the overall organic traffic volumes.
You as a business owner or decision-maker need to understand the implications of a domain name change before moving forward.
For example, if your business is retaining control over an existing/old domain name, it’s possible to deploy 301 redirects, which will automatically push visitors to old URLs over to your chosen pages on the new website/domain.
If you look to sell your old domain, you’ll need to start over completely. Without your old domain, you will lose all link equity earned or built up over the website. Before you sell your old domain name, take the old content first and publish it in the new location. If the content’s value was good, it can potentially attract new links as well.
While search engines are figuring out ways to deal to reestablish your redirects, your organic traffic can decrease temporarily. If you start generating user-valuable content for the new site, you should be able to recover your traffic gradually, usually three-to-six months.
Other factors that affect SEO
Domain name changes are only one of many factors that affect your SEO rankings. It’s vital to learn about other website structures that could affect your SEO performance.
To stay up of the rankings, ensure that you build a good website structure since it can give a positive user experience and your visitors will be more compelled to revisit.
Create a site with a good link structure for easy navigation.
A great website with a sensible structure allows Google Crawlers to have an easier time classifying, indexing and ranking your site. Before you develop or redevelop a website, plan a hierarchy in detail that is as flat (i.e. only require 3-4 clicks from your homepage to internal pages) and as user-friendly as possible.
To sum, anything that requires updating your domain name, structure, content, and location of your website can affect SEO. Choose a domain name provider that offers good after-sales support and web hosting capabilities to help you get started on the right footing. Use the discussed ways to minimize the after-effects of site updates so that it will result in your desired goals.