Redirect Wordpress to New Domain: What About Google Ranking

Assuming you continue to use WordPress.org, if you keep the permalink structure intact (all URLs should remain the same) on your self-hosted blog, nothing should change for you in regards to your Google ranking.

One detail: the wordpress.com blog location of your servers matters for Google, so if the new host you use is not based in the US, your rankings may likely change. Then again, if you actually move to a host closer to your target audience, that will only be better.

SEO juice won’t transfer, and you need to consider this. This article and resources from Google’s webmaster Blog central gives a guide to best approach to moving your domain and minimising impact on seo and ranking, see this link. The new site won’t automatically rank, but the traffic will. Alexa will take time, again to reward you with a glorious falling number.

There are a handful of ways to move a website up and increase the rankings in Google search. Often times this will depend on onsite factors that existed in the first place (including: ensuring that the site can be crawled and indexed, keyphrase targeting, creating a solid information architecture, speeding up the site’s page and image loading times, etc.) but once the site is in order, the most substantive benefit will come from the number of links pointed at a site from other sites across the web.

Movin’ on up

The more links, and from trusted and high-authority sites, the more likely you are to rank for a term and also for term subsets. Quantity matters, but there should be emphasis on getting quality links in first as quantity is much easier and quicker to take care of. (But it counts a well.)

In this article, I show Google+ Spark early results, and it is expected that Google Plus Sparks will soon fit into the SEO phrase and word-ranking scheme.

About Saul Fleischman

Founder of emerging social media tool sites. Bootstrapping innovation with lean startup development teams. I do project management, user experience, PR, marketing and community development.

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Karl L Hughes

When I first launched a website, I didn’t realize this about domain transfers. A few months later, I switched the structure of the URL and lost all my Facebook likes and it really hurt my SEO. Lesson learned: plan ahead!
- Saul Fleischman
  
  Thanks, Karl. The FB likes to lose are a downer, eh? However, sometimes other benefits to a domain transfer look appealing.
Kristi Hines

I just moved my husband’s photography site from one WordPress self-hosted domain to another. His original domain ranked #2 for his name, and right now, even though his name is in the domain, the new one ranks at #9. His overall traffic from keywords has dropped in half, but it’s only been a week since we made the switch. I’m hoping it should all get caught up again soon.
- Saul Fleischman
  
  I would think that will transfer – but could take longer than you’d imagine. 1-3 months, from what people tell me.
- KrisOlin
  
  Hi Kristi,
  
  What steps did you take when changing the domain name?
  
  I need to pull the same stunt on my blog and I’m wondering if it’s enough if I change the Word Press URL and Site URL in the general settings to the new domain name. Then I’d just rename the Root folder on my server to the new domain name as well. Do you think this would do the trick?
  
  I would really appreciate your advice on this matter.
  
  Cheers,
  Kris
KrisOlin

Hi Saul,

This is a topic that might become unfortunately handy for me in the near future as, according to Mari Smith Facebook is claiming all Facebook related domain names to themselves. As my blog is at http://facebook-advertising-marketing.com/ it would be in the firing zone as it gets more popular (thanks to Triberr for instance, but that’s another story…).

For preparation I have a good backup domain name available (social-media-advertising.com) and now I’m wondering if I should go and pre-empt the FB move and start using my new domain before they make me.

My main concern are the domain name based links. At the moment they are in the format of http://facebook-advertising-marketing.com/top-20-most-popular-websites-in-the-world/ and my question is do the links change automatically convert to http://social-media-advertising.com/top-20-most-popular-websites-in-the-world/ after the 301? That’s all fine BUT what happens if FB takes over my domain and makes it redirect to facebook.com? That does not sound good!

My second concern is what happens to my social share button data? Will they all go to zero?
- Saul Fleischman
  
  Thanks Kris, and that does reek of Facebook – the claim for everything imaginable relating to FB being claimed by them. Can’t say I know anything about that, though, so I wouldn’t have an opinion on whether you actually need to act on it yet.
  - KrisOlin
    
    Yes, I know FB is getting to be a pain sometimes. What would your guess be regarding my social share scores if I’d go and change the domain? Would they reset to zero?
    - OsakaSaul
      
      My guess in no; your social shares should be tied to your FB, G+, Reddit, etc. accounts. (Right?)
John Hawes

I use Digi Link Doctor to help with recovering lost links into WordPress sites.
- OsakaSaul
  
  Thanks, John. I’ll have to read about that.
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