Changing a Website's Domain Name While Minimizing SEO Impact

Changing a website's domain name is a task that requires careful planning and execution to ensure a seamless transition between the old and new domains while maintaining search engine optimization (SEO) and user experience.

Since the 301 redirect time to take effect in Google is not fixed, it depends on several factors, including the size of the website, the number of redirects, the frequency of the site's crawl rate, etc. Generally, Google takes from a few days to several months to complete the 301 redirect processing for the entire site.

Therefore, ensure that your old domain is valid for at least a few months and that it can resolve correctly during this period to allow search engines to complete the 301 redirect process smoothly, minimizing SEO impact during the website transition.

Pointing the New Domain

In the new domain's management panel, point the A record to the server IP.

Modify Website Configuration

Update configuration files in the server and website management system to replace the old domain with the new domain.

Edit the file /site/config.php, find the parameter $config->httpHosts, and modify it to

$config->httpHosts = array('your-new-domain.com');

301 Redirect

Set up a 301 redirect in the server configuration to permanently redirect all URLs from the old domain to the corresponding URLs on the new domain. This is an SEO-friendly and recommended practice that can retain most of the SEO weight.

Example: If you are using an Apache server, you can add the following code to the .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^old-domain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://new-domain.com/$1 [L,R=301,NC]

Notify Search Engines

Add and verify the new domain in Google Search Console, and use the [Settings] -> [Change of Address] tool to notify Google of your domain change.