Moving? Transfer Your Website Without Affecting Rankings (Much)

So you've rebranded or renamed your business.  You've got a long-established reputation with Google or other search engines and rank highly with your old domain.  You really don't want to go through that fight again with a new domain to get to where you already are.  So, how do you move to a new domain without adversely affecting your rankings?

First, you need to create a sitemap for your old domain.  This makes it easier for Google and other search engines to find content on your website that may not be as well linked as other content.  (This is actually a something that should be done for every website, period.)

Next, you need to create content for the new domain and take it live.  This should not be copies of content that currently exists on your own domain because you do not want to be penalized for duplicate content.

After you get some content available on the new domain, make sure you register it with Google Webmaster Tools.  If you hadn't already registered your old domain with Google Webmaster Tools, you'll want to do that now.  This is a painless and easy process that only takes a few minutes (and should also be done for every website).

Set up 301 redirects from your old domain to your new domain.  This will make users' browsers automatically change old-domain.com/widget to new-domain.com/widget and will also tell search engines that your pages have permanently been moved.  If you are actually transferring content to a new server, make sure that the structure is the same so that all that changes is the domain before the first slash.

Now, submit the sitemap that you created for your old domain to Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Center.  This is very important as it will encourage the search engines to recrawl your old domain and recognize that your content has permanently moved.  When they see a 301 redirect, they will update their index so that everything now points to your new domain.

Next, fill out the Change of Address form in Google Webmaster Tools and submit a new sitemap for the new domain to the engines.  This will tell Google that your site has indeed moved and they will crawl the new domain.  The sitemap will help ensure that they do not miss any pages.

Finally, wait a couple of weeks and check the Diagnostics section in Google Webmaster Tools.  Fix any errors that occur as quickly as possible.  Keep monitoring this section until you are fairly certain that everything has been updated correctly in the index.  Also, be sure to keep control of your old domain so that the redirects are still valid when Google crawls websites that are using old links to your site.