Changing domain names

We want to move our site to a domain name that better reflects our business nature. I can not seem to find a thread here that covers all the info on this, so could someone explain in simple terms what we have to do to change our name without losing our current positions. Please be patient with me, thank you.

Are you moving to a new server or not?

For staying on same server:

- Register new domain.
- Get it pointed to the server.
- Install a site-wide 301 redirect from the old domain to the new domain.
- Make sure that you take care of both www and non-www URLs.

For moving to a new server:

- Register the new domain.
- Get the site online on the new server.
- Point the DNS for the new domain at the new server.
- Set the old domain name on the old server to issue a 301 redirect to the new domain.
- Eventually point the old domain name at the new server, and a few days later get rid of the old server. Make sure that you install a 301 redirect from old domain name to the new domain name on the new server too.

You will lose positions for several months simply because the new domain will have no "age" and no "trust". That can take a year to build up again.

You will be better advised to not change domain, but if you do it is key that you have the 301 redirect from the old domain to the new domain to at least carry over some of the PR from the old site.

Thank you for your quick reply g1smd, we are not changing servers, just want to use a new name. When you say that 'you will lose positions for several months' does that only apply when changing servers or will we lose positions even if we follow your first instruction (staying on same server). We get most of our enquiries from the internet. Thank you.

Changing servers is no big deal if you do it the right way. You don't suffer any loss in traffic when you change the servers. But surely when you change names - domain names - it is different. The new domain, as g1msd pointed out will need to get 301 redirection from the old one and to reflect on the search engines, it takes quite some time.

You will be well advised to retain the old domain.

The new domain will be "new" so it will not have the same "trust" or "age" and those are seeming important in the "new Google" - so the new site will not do so well at first.

The old domain will continue to be listed as Supplemental Results for a while, so it is vital that where those pages rank that the 301 redirect takes the vistor through to the new site.

With the combination of the two you might retain most of your traffic. Having only a new domain, and no access via the old domain, will cause a crash in traffic for many months.