A detailed breakdown of how to perform domain migration to increase traffic on the new domain by Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR
1. Open the Targeted Domain at least 3 months before Complete Redirection
— Create a targeted domain and rank it for the new brand name. When people search for the new brand name, the domain should appear at the top.
— Allow the new domain to gather historical data to change the query meaning and context from the old domain’s context to the new one.
— Rank the targeted domain for at least 3 months with the old and new brand names.
— Open the new domain for 3 months and rank it for the entire web entity, not just the website, including:
— — Creating a Google Business Profile with the new brand name
— — Opening social media accounts with the new name and ranking them
— On the new website, keep everything the same but change the logo and social media accounts to the new brand.
— Set canonical tags from the new domain to the old domain for the first 3 months.
2. Understand and Perform the Multi-step Redirection
The multi-step redirection involves partial migration followed by complete migration:
Partial Migration
— Use cross-domain canonicals between the old and new domains
— Add Crypto-canonicals stating the original content is on the old domain
— Reverse the canonicals from the old domain to the new domain while adding Crypto-canonicals from the new domain to the old domain
— Move the 20 most critical articles from the old to the new domain
— Publish 20 new unique articles only on the new domain
— Point header/footer menu links from the old domain to the new domain
— Use the old and new brand names together on social media accounts
— Explicitly link to the new domain from the old domain homepage
— Use “Old Brand Name (New Brand Name)” on the old domain and the reverse on the new domain
— Link from old social media accounts to the new ones
— Ensure new queries appear as “Old brand name + New brand name”
— Compare auto-suggestions for the old and new domains to ensure similarity
Complete Migration
— Perform the full migration and use the change of address tool to notify Google
— Keep ownership of both domains and the redirection between them indefinitely
3. Align Ranked Query Networks between Redirected and Targeted Domain
— Ensure traffic flows from the old domain to the new domain
— Correlate this referral traffic with referral crawler hits from Googlebot in log files
— Ensure both domains exist in the same query networks with similar contexts
— Track users with a user-id to verify the same users visit both domains from the same query paths
4. Adjust your “Content Bank” to have Momentum during and after Migration
— Continuously publish and update content on the website during migration to keep search engine attention
— Newly published content should mention the new brand name and link from the homepage
— Use Organizational Structured Data specifying the old and new names
— Diversify traffic sources during migration, such as using email marketing
— Keep technical factors like hosting, IP, CMS the same between the old and new domains
— Redirect all resource URLs and keep image URLs the same
5. Have Third-party Reviews and Information Extraction Points (IEP) Mentioning the Brand Name Change
— Ensure the old and new brand names are associated in an entity-hierarchy across the web
— Get the brand name change mentioned in news, press releases, social media, SaaS directories
— Have user reviews reflect the old and new brand name association
— Keep key entity signifiers like CEO, founders, address consistent across sources
— Manage your Brand SERP and Knowledge Panels using authoritative third-party sources
— Get linked from relevant industry sources, forums, subreddits etc that mention both brand names
The key is to transition query meaning, align user behavior, and build consensus around the brand name change using on-site changes, redirects, and off-site corroboration over several months. Maintaining momentum throughout the process is crucial.
https://twitter.com/KorayGubur/status/1770188713290793448
