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All Articles [20] NHS/PCT [3] Government [1] Online Business [4] Corporate [1] Small Business [4] Web Site [10] Urls [2] SEO [6] Marketing [10] Photography [1] Print [2]Will I Lose My Rankings If I Move My Website?
See all articles by: Lucas Scholten
Last updated: [ 10.11.2008 ]
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The simple answer is “well yes, most probably”, but there are solutions which I will come to later. First though, I’ll explain why moving a website to a new domain name or even changing file structure, can cause rankings to drop significantly.
Why?
Most search engines count how many websites link to your website. Although not entirely accurate, a basic rule is that the more links you have pointing to your website, the more likely it will rank higher. This is because a link to your website, in the eyes of a search engine, is a lot like a vote for your website. If you have a good website, people will talk about it and reference it by linking to it from their websites. Conversely, if you have a poor website, not many people will link to it. Thus more links is like having more recommendations, warranting search engines to share your website with the public and giving it a higher rank.
When people link to a website they use the following piece of code:
<a xhref=”www.yourwebsite.com”>Click here!</a>
This will produce a blue underlined hyperlink that when clicked will go to www.yourwebsite.com.
If you decide you want to change your website address to something new, you have a problem. All those links that people made in the past will now go nowhere.
For example, Mark owns the domain cheese.co.uk, but has decided he wants a more global presence. To fit with that branding, Mark has decided to change his address to cheese.com
Now when anyone clicks a link that pointed to cheese.co.uk, they will get an error message because nothing resides there anymore. Not only that, but search engines will revisit those links and also get an error message. Because it cannot associate cheese.co.uk with cheese.com, the Search Engine must now conclude cheese.co.uk no longer exists. This means all those links you had no longer count for anything and you lose your rankings!
The Solutions
- The first solution is to not make the change at all. If changing the address is not vital then leaving it as it is, is usually the best option.
- The second solution is to simply go ahead with it and forget the consequences. This can be fine on occasions where the site doesn’t have many links pointing to it anyway.
- This is the usual solution. Make sure you get your web designer to “301 redirect” your old address to your new address. This means that all visitors who click old links will automatically be redirected to your new website. It is also the type of redirect search engines can follow and so in principle you should retain your rankings.
A Word of Warning
Some people try to “game” search engine rankings by buying old domains with lots of links and 301 redirecting them to their own site.
Since search engines are aware of this tactic they must be very careful about which 301 redirects they accept and which they do not. They want to allow website owners to move their website about, but they don’t want people exploiting 301’s to get a better rank. As such, whenever a 301 is performed search engines must evaluate whether the new website is exactly the same as the old. If it is completely different it looks suspicious, if it is the same or similar, they are more likely to retain the rank.
If you are moving to a new domain as part of re-branding and making a new website at the same time, make sure you host the old website on the new domain for a few months before switching to a new design. This makes sure the search engines don’t end up thinking you’re trying to “game” their algorithm.
Even when you follow all the guidelines it’s possible that during the evaluation period, old links will get discounted. In most cases it shouldn’t happen, but it can, so it’s usually far better to leave a website intact, rather than move to a new address, especially if you already have some very good rankings.
Contact us now, to find out more.