Domain Name Migation + HTTPS?
-
One of our clients is considering migrating their domain name _and _changing protocol (http to https), as well as changing hosting providers, at the same time.
Is it fine to make the changes at the same time, or would you recommend 'phasing' the migration?
-
Hi ThreeShips!
I agree with Vetty. If migrating to a new domain AND to HTTPs, I would recommend doing this in phases. It's the safest way to do this without causing a major problem with the site. If something with the migration were to go wrong, it will be much easier to spot and correct the problem than if you did both migrations at the same time.
-
Phase it to ensure every aspect of this migration is accounted for meticulously. A new domain move is always risky and then adding an additional redirect to the mix will make it messy and hard to keep track of.
You could potentially do the below:
Organise the redirect list and make sure every url is accounted for from the domain you're redirecting (I'm sure this is already done)
Change hosting providers first so you can manage and work on everything under the one account.
Add a 301 redirect script for the new domain to automatically redirect http to https
Then redirect the old domain urls to the new https domain to avoid the additional redirect to the httpThis would avoid the typical chain "http://olddomain.com > http://newdomain.com > https://newdomain.com" and instead just have "http://olddomain.com > https://newdomain.com"
Up to you how the process is done, but I would definitely phase migration.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Duplicate content across domains?
Does anyone have suggestions for managing duplicate product/solution website content across domains? (specifically parent/child company domains) Is it advisable to do this? Will it hurt either domain? Any best practices when going down this path?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pilgrimquality0 -
Losing backlinks between http and https
Late last year, Shopify moved all their sites from http to https. I did an audit of a Shopify site recently and discovered the following... The https version of the site has just 13 backlinks from 5 domains The http version of the site has 568 backlinks from 48 domains So I went into the blog (which is on a different domain - long story) and changed all the backlinks from http to https. One week later... the https version of the site now has 278 backlinks from the same 5 domains. I've been told that Google doesn't worry about this when it comes to rankings. Not sure if this is true or not. But I definitely believe this DOES affect MOZ Domain Authority. Can anybody confirm or deny this? If the backlinks do not change from http to https following a migration, does this impact MOZ Domain Authority and/or Google rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | muzzmoz0 -
How to switch brand domain and address previous use of domain
We recently acquired a new domain to replace existing as it better fits our brand. We have little/no organic value on existing domain so switching is not an issue. However the newly acquired domain was previously used in a different industry and has inbound links with significant spam scores. How can we let Google know that these links are not valid for our business and start rebuilding reputation of the domain? Disavow tool?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Marlette0 -
Possible to Change Domain Name without Negative Rankings
Is it possible to migrate to a new domain name without negatively impacting SEO? Our existing domain name (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com) is a bit spammy. It has been used for almost 10 years. We would like to migrate it to www.metro-manhattan.com. The metro-manhattan domain has been registered about 5 years and it redirects to the nyc-officespace-leader.com domain. The nyc-officespace-leader.com has a domain authority of 23 and a page authority of 32. The metro-manhattan domain has a domain authority of 7 and a page authority of 23. Is it possible to make this transition without losing domain authority and page rank? I would think that having two domains might loo spammy to Google and this change would be a positive in the long term. We do understand that the redirects for each page would need to be done carefully. Thanks, Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
No Domain Authority after 6 weeks
Hi, We have just launched a new e-commerce site and 301'd a lot of the products and categories to the new site. I have also added a link or 2 from other domains. We launched it on 10th of June - but still using site explorer, there is no domain authority showing - just a 1. Why is that? Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
Merging domains into sudomains
I know that questions about this topic have been asked before, but I didn't really find an answer that I could apply to our situation. We have several websites that now exist on separate domains, even though their topics are closely related. We are moving each of these sites into a new CMS and are considering collapsing all of the domains into a sub-domain structure around the strongest domain. Important to note: All of the current domains have existed for many years and have strong site authority, and regardless of the domain decision, in this restructuring we will be bringing them all under a global header. I know that there are SEO risks to moving a site from an established domain to a new one, even with 301 redirects in place, but the team in charge of this move wants to know how much of a hit we would take and how quickly natural search traffic might recover. Maybe and mights aren't really satisfying their questions... Does anyone have experience with collapsing domains into a sub-domain structure and feel like sharing your results? Most importantly, was it worth it???? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JuliaG0 -
Complementary Domain
Hi guys, I have the following situation I would like some help. Because my client is in Brazil, I will make up fictional names so it's easier to understand. My client is a shoe store whose domain is mangabeira.com. That is the brand name and will always be the main domain and reference of the website. We were offered the domain shoes.com. There is no intention of changing the brand name or anything, but there would be a redirect that would send the user who to mangabeira.com. My question is how much impact would that complementary domain do to my SEO performance and how that redirect must be handled. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LucasLopes0 -
Link to domain
Let's say i want to rank for rental car service and purchases a domain rental-car-service and creates a site http://www.rental-car-service.com There will be few persons who won't use anchor text to link to the site, but will simply link using URL ( in this case http://www.rental-car-service.com ) So, will a link to http://www.rental-car-service.com from another site using http://www.rental-car-service.com as anchor text help the keyword rental car service ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoug_20050