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Name Change

by lazi
10 replies
Hello
I need some help desperately
My website is with SiteSell, which I have been reasonably happy with. Their customer service however is fairly minimal and it is sometimes difficult to get info from them (it has to be done by email).

My renewal is due in one month and I told them I wish to renew, but I want to change the name of my site. THey said it cannot be done. If I wish to change the name of my site, I have to purchase a new subscription and build my site all over, page by page.

That is an enormous job - I already have about 100 pages on my site! And what if I had 1000 pages? The task would be impossible.

Their advice does not sound right to me. I'm sure people change website names quite often. There must be an easy way to do this.

Any suggestions appreciated

lazi
#change
  • Profile picture of the author anth.elias
    Are you talking domain name change? If you are and your site has been around for a while I would not recommend it. There are little things you can do like permanent 301 redirects but that is just mainly for pages within your site. You can redirect to another domain, but i imagine that will impact your SEO in the long run.

    You might want to try contacting the new host and see if they will move the site for you, and you can also outsource the project.
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    • Profile picture of the author lazi
      Thanks aelias

      My site is only about 6 months old. I am getting 1000 visitors per month, although that jumped up to 4000, this last month.

      Apart from the fact that a name change may affect my SEO ratings, there is no real reason it cannot be done, is there?

      The name of my site at the moment is all wrong.

      lazi
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      • Profile picture of the author Kay King
        I'm sure people change website names quite often.
        No, they don't. Don't know why you would think that.

        If you have traffic to the site - it's coming to THAT domain name. That isn't just a title - it's the address of all of your information for that site. The url IS the location identifier for your site. Change that - and you start over.

        You could redirect from the old domain - but that is not the best solution and you will lose traffic and SEO in changing the domain name. For example - any links pointing to your site point to that domain. You have to start over generating links to the new domain.

        If you use the domain name as the title on your webpages- why not just change the name there? The title you show on pages doesn't have to be the same as the url. That's a minor change - changing the url is a big deal.

        kay
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  • Profile picture of the author Brad Mc Bard
    Hi,
    Why not park another domain on your existing site, then you'll have both sites up and running.

    Check your control panel. Although I must say I don't know how SitesSell works, all my hosts enable me to park additional domains.

    This means that if i have myoldsite[dot]com and I park mynewsite[dot]com , everybody using, for example mynewsite[dot]com/thisdir/thatpage.html will actaully see myoldsite[dot]com/thisdir/thatpage.html , without knowing (the browser address bar will show "mynewsite").

    Again - don't know how SiteSell works, but if they'll let you do this - you'll be keeping all your previous SEO and visitors, plus get new visitors to the new site.

    And the change will take you all of five minutes.

    Good Luck!
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  • Profile picture of the author RoyChan
    lazi,

    Been there, done that.

    Sitesell does not let you change or amend your domain, 6 months after you registered it. And if you need to transfer your domain, you need to go through a easy yet painful process.

    You need to take the content of your site and rebuild it from scratch!

    I recommend you to submit a ticket to Sitesell:

    SiteSell Support

    If you desire to change your hosting, which I recommend you to do so, since there is one month away from your renewal.

    Transfer your domain to namecheap or somewhere, set it a redirect to your preferred site. Buy a cheap hosting - recommend you to go with hostgator.com (cheap pricing + great service) I used them before, they are good.

    Use Wordpress to host your site and rebuild it from scratch. (Yes, ditch Sitesell, you can get back your visitors in months!) Wordpress is good for all the SEO work that Sitesell teaches you.

    If you need a road map to rebuild your site, check out my sig and download the free pdf,which will be handy.

    Hope it helps,
    Roy
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    • Profile picture of the author lazi
      Thanks Everyone

      I'm new at all this, and I initially thought a name change would be the simplest thing in the world. Little did I know...

      I read your replies quickly, but will now read them more carefully.

      Thanks again

      lazi
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      • Profile picture of the author lazi
        Hello

        What would be the problem with just changing my site name, and then just pointing the old name to my new name.

        I guess I'd lose some SEO ranking, but my ranking is very, very low anyway, so I wouldn't be losing much.

        Would appreciate any comments

        lazi
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        • Profile picture of the author lazi
          just wanted to clarify netpro7's comment that I change to hostgator, and then you mention wordpress also.

          does that mean I change to both - hostgator for the hosting, and wordpress for the SEO stuff?

          Thanks for your help

          lazi
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          • Profile picture of the author Kay King
            No one is going to say "gee - that's a great idea to change the domain" - because it isn't. However, if you feel it's necessary it's up to you. If you use site sell you will be starting and paying for another site. Those are their terms.

            If your current site is getting 4000 unique visitors a month (as opposed to 4000 "hits" a month) it does have some ranking or SEO that's pulling in those visitors as you don't mention using PPC.

            If you build your own site and get hosting for it - you will need to learn to do it. As I notice you asked "what is ftp" in another thread, I don't think you have the experience yet to understand many of the methods being proposed above. (FTP is file transfer protocol - a fancy name for the way you get your newly built or edited website from your computer or site builder to your hosting account so it shows online. There are free FTP programs such as Filezilla that you can download to do this.)

            kay
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