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    5. Move domain to new domain, for how much time should I keep forwarding?

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    Move domain to new domain, for how much time should I keep forwarding?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
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    • Fulanito
      Fulanito last edited by

      I'm not sure but my website looks like is not getting it's juice as supposed to be. As we already know, google preferred https sites and this is what happened to mine, it was been crawling as https but when the time came to move my domain to new domain, I used 301 or domain forwarding service, unfortunately they didn't have a way to forward from https to new https, they only had regular http to https, when users clicked to my old domain from google search my site was returned to "site does not exist", I used hreflang at least that google would detect my new domain been forwarding and yes it worked but now I'm wondering, for how much time should I keep the forwarding the old domain to the new one, my site looks like is not going up, I have changed all the external links, any help would be appreciated.

      Thanks!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • OlegKorneitchouk
        OlegKorneitchouk @EGOL last edited by

        Agreed, the redirects/canonicals should be permanent (well, for as long as you want the authority to pass along).

        You would see changes in serps within 2 weeks usually.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • EGOL
          EGOL last edited by

          Some people believe that it is very important to maintain 301 redirects for a long time.

          If you have mydomain.com redirecting to mynewdomain.com and remove the redirects, then any links from xyz.com that point to mydomain.com will not go to the proper destination.  All of their clickthrough traffic will be lost.  And, if you remove the 301 you are letting the flow of ranking value to chance.  Will Google forget where those links are supposed to go five years from now.  (they might not be archiving this stuff as well as you think)  How about other search engines?  Or new search engines.

          I have redirected domains a few times and all of those domains still have their redirects in place.  The cost of maintaining them is usually going to be very low compared to the possible losses.

          All of my redirected domains will be in place when I go to my own funeral.  And, in the "urgent" section of my business continuity plan, my heirs are instructed to protect those old domains and redirects as if they were caches of gold.

          OlegKorneitchouk 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
          • Fulanito
            Fulanito @OlegKorneitchouk last edited by

            Hey Oleg,

            again, thank you for answering to this. Just to make sure, this is more than 3 weeks now, in other words I'm good to cancel the old domain now or should I keep it as a referral?

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • OlegKorneitchouk
              OlegKorneitchouk @Fulanito last edited by

              I would guess similar to 301 redirects... about 2 weeks.

              The faster you can get Google to recrawl the pages and index the new canonical URLs, the quicker the authority will transfer over.

              Fulanito 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • Fulanito
                Fulanito @OlegKorneitchouk last edited by

                Hi Oleg, thank you so much for your response. I have actually done all of the canonical too and removed hreflangs as I did it to alternate the switch from https as it wasn't recognizing but all done. The site still not going much I'm not sure if it's about the Fred they are talking about now or don't know, however, the question is how long should I keep the old domain been forwarding?

                Thanks!

                OlegKorneitchouk 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • OlegKorneitchouk
                  OlegKorneitchouk last edited by

                  huh? hreflang shouldn't be part of the equation here.

                  If you can't setup redirects, see if you can put canonicals on old pages to the new site. That way you'll transfer ranking benefits to the new site.

                  Fulanito 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
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