Moving Site without Losing Traffic?

Use a 301 redirect to point your old domain to your new domain. 301 redirects transfer all the link juice (backlinks) to the new domain, and all traffic will be redirected to your new address.

There are a lot of different ways to setup a 301 redirect, but I prefer using the .htaccess file. If you aren't an advanced user then you'll want to be very careful with that file (oftentimes your hosting company will be more than happy to modify it for you).

Here are some resources that I hope help:

• Google Webmaster Tools 301 Redirects
• 301 Redirects How To
• Moz 301 Best Practices

by "changing URL", what exactly do you mean? are you changing domains or just moving your wordpress site to a different directory or subdomain within the same domain?

because these are different things. loaf1011 is right about the 301 redirect, but there are different ways of implementing them properly depending on your actual case.

So if I do a 301 redirect - do I have to go through EVERY page on my site and create the redirect or can I automatically "clone" my site and then use the permalinks?

If you change your domain, even if you use 301 redirect, you can't retain your traffic as google will deinsdexed those links that are not active anymore (your old domain).

It is true? How I get my traffic to change / move my wab link?

Yeah, 301 redirects will work like a charm. Good info in this thread.

I do a lot of server migrations and sometimes customers change their domains. Also I have customers that buy sites and merge them into their own.

A few tips:

Verify 301s
Make sure your 301 redirect is working properly - especially on internal URLs.

You can use
REDbot: <>
To easily see the headers.

Don't Use WP Plugins
I have seen some WP plugins that attempt to do 301 redirects. I have found these to be problematic in many situations. This becomes especially true if you add caching plugins or other plugins that introduce complex rewrite rules.

You are best off doing this via Apache rewrite rules.

Canonical URL Loops
Be sure to manually check www vs. non www redirects. I have seen problems where someone gets the ordering of these rules wrong and causes loops.

Also do not change how you have been doing canonical redirects. For example, if you were previously doing:
Leve this in place and then place your re-write rule to go to the new domain after this. So the order would be:

I don't have hard evidence but I've seen problems where you change to something like this:

Setup a New Site
If the site is small, I've often found it better to setup a new hosting account for your new domain. The reason is that there are fewer problems with re-write rules - especially if you are not used to them.

This way on your old domain, you can just put in a redirect for the entire site. Then on your new sites, WP can manage your rewrite rules. This approach is especially useful if you use caching plugins.

Traffic Drop
We almost always see traffic drops during these moves. That is normal. Traffic and SERPs usually rebound in 1-4 weeks.


A bit old but useful:

My 2 cents.....

Once you move all your stuff to a new domain name, you will probably lose your rankings too.

Others may disagree with me but that's my view.

I guess the reality is right now my site get's 20-30 google hits a month 99% of my traffic is social - so does all that even matter?