subject: How Do I Minimize Traffic Loss After A Domain Name Change? [print this page] Traffic is the key to success on the internetTraffic is the key to success on the internet. Anyone who has tried to make a website successful knows that the best site in the world isn't much good unless you can get people to visit it. As such, we spend hours and hours coming up with strategies and economical search engine optimization practices that we think are going to get us more traffic. Sometimes though, things are going to come up which we need to do which may not be ideal in terms of our traffic flow. A good example of this is when you decide for whatever reason that you need to make a change to your domain name. If this situation comes up, you need to think about how you could make the change while causing as little damage as possible to your traffic flow.
Remember, that even if you do experience a temporary loss in traffic as a result of changing your domain name, there still may be very good reason to do it. If you get access to a domain which is much more brand identity friendly, for example, it will help people remember it, and stick in people's minds which is a great marketing tool. You might also find a domain which is much more keyword and SEO friendly, which in time could help you grow your site to more traffic than you ever got with the old domain. These are all factors you need to weigh when considering this type of switch.
If you've invested considerable time and effort into the building of traffic at your old domain, the best option is often going to be to put a permanent 301 redirect in place at your old domain, which will point at the new domain name instead. This is going to tell the search engines that your site has moved, and over time as the index has updated, the rankings you have in the search engine should begin to point at the new site instead. What you do not want to do is use a temporary 302 redirect, as this often has a very detrimental effect on your search rankings.
It is important that you realize that it can take some time for search engine rankings to flow completely from the old domain to the new one. You're going to want to leave the domain redirect up for at least several months for the best effect.
