SEO Impact of getting a Domain on a well established wordpress.com site
-
Hi,
Simple question (I think!), hopefully some people have experience of this.
I have been using WordPress for many years without ever having got a Domain for it. So I’m still https://kevinstandagephotography.wordpress.com/.
5 years down the line, and with over 500 blog articles, some of my work ranks very highly in Google.
I’m considering finally getting a Domain, or rather using a Domain I already have (GoDaddy) and redirecting to my WordPress blog,
My question is, what impact will this have on my SEO if I make this switch to using a Domain ?
a) Does Google just figure it out, my SEO page ranking remain pretty good and it marries up to the pages to the “new Domain”
b) Or is this in effect a reset of my SEO, and google figures out the ranking from here on in.
I’d be interested to know of any real life experiences from those who have done such a switch after having already got established with the x.wordpress.com FQDN. I’d be equally interested in anyone who might have a more theoretical opinion as well :-)
Thanks,
Kevin.The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
-
@kevinstandagehotography Hi there,
What you need is to set up a 301 re-direct then. Make sure to read through the following document:
https://wordpress.com/support/site-redirect/Hope this helps!
-
umm…did you read anything about my question at all ???? !!
I’m not asking how to do any redirecting (which will be via GoDaddy anyway), I’m looking for thoughts on the impact of making this change to my existing SEO.
Kevin.
-
Hello Kevin,
Turns out changing a domain name without it having any effect on the SEO is not as simple of a process as we might like and it will require quite a bit of due diligence and attention to detail to pull off right.
The process usually involves auditing your current website for incoming links. No one wants to lose a good link since it’s one of the biggest SEO factors. After that, you will want to do an audit of the domain your transferring to. Use a backlink checker to see what sites are linking to that domain, and also do a search on archive.org to see if it has a clean past.
As @anastas10s mentioned, you’re going to need to set up 301 redirects because they will not only send the user to the correct page but will also tell search engines that the page has permanently been moved. You must make sure everything is getting 301 redirected properly since it affects your search results and traffic.
URL structure is also a factor to keep in mind. In general, it’s best to keep the same structure when you move since you already have to deal with the domain switch. If you wish, you can change it after a few months when the initial “shock” of the transfer has passed.
One of the most important steps is to let Google know you changed domains. You can do that by using their Change of Address Tool:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9370220?hl=enAfter you’ve done the transfer and done all those steps, you’re going to need to test. Test a lot. Test everything. Besides doing the testing yourself, see if you can get a few friends or loyal readers to help you. They might notice some errors or bugs you haven’t.
Google Analytics and Google Search Console are amazing tools that will help you monitor your site’s health and performance. You can use them to check if Google is correctly tracking your new domain, monitor traffic numbers, see if visitors are getting any 404 pages, etc.
Besides the technical work, you will also want to see if you can get into contact with the websites that had incoming links to your blog (you should have a list if you did the initial audit) and get them to directly change the URL they refer in their websites. Then you will need to update all of your social media and other online profiles that link your site, your email signature, visit cards, and other promotional material, etc. Lastly, you can run a marketing campaign or organize an event for the new launch to get the word out.
Looks like you’re going to be quite busy in the near future. I hope this helped :D.
-
@kevinstandagehotography My bad, I took it like you are ready to take the plunge instead.
@luanluta996 A brilliant answer which I will save for future reference, cheers!
- The topic ‘SEO Impact of getting a Domain on a well established wordpress.com site’ is closed to new replies.
WordPress.com Forums 