Changing Your Website's Domain Name: 6 Steps to Minimize Traffic Loss

Changing a domain name is something many websites will eventually have to deal with, but most people don’t realize that changing a domain name or modifying the URL structure comes at a cost to the website. If done correctly, the losses can be minimized; if done poorly, the SEO authority built up over time may be lost. We’ve compiled the key points to keep in mind during the domain name change process into the following six steps for webmasters who need this guidance.

1. When redesigning a website, try not to change URLs unless absolutely necessary. Never change the domain name, and keep the URLs of existing pages as consistent as possible, ensuring that each page corresponds to a unique URL. People can change their names, but others can still recognize them by their faces; web pages don’t have “faces.” Once a URL changes, search engines will treat it as a brand-new page and re-index it. Even if you set up 301 redirects and submit a site migration rule, it still takes time for page authority to transfer, and there will inevitably be some traffic loss during this process. Furthermore, during many website redesigns, 301 redirects, the submission of redesign rules, and the handling of broken links are not executed perfectly, so the authority of old pages often cannot be transferred promptly or completely.
2. There Must Be a Consistent Pattern Between Old and New URLs. If a change is absolutely necessary—whether switching domains or modifying the URL structure—it’s essential to maintain consistency between the old and new pages. This is beneficial for setting up 301 redirects and submitting the redesign rules to the Webmaster Platform. For example, if the old URL is www.a.com/2016/123.html, it’s best to keep the ID unchanged in the new URL, making it www.b.com/2016/123.html. This one-to-one correspondence makes the replacement process much clearer.
3. Set Up Redirects Between Old and New URLs. After changing the domain name or adjusting the URL structure, you should set up 301 redirects from the old pages to their corresponding new pages, rather than redirecting all pages from the old domain to the new site’s homepage en masse. A 301 redirect requires that the main content of the original and destination pages remain consistent—the redirect merely changes the address, not the content. If a user clicks on Page A but sees the content of Page B, the user experience will be poor, and it may also lead to misunderstandings by search engines.
4. Replace links to the old URL on the new page. After the site redesign is complete, there are often still many links to the old domain remaining in the body of the new page; these need to be replaced one by one, either programmatically or manually, with the new addresses. Reciprocal links previously exchanged with other websites should also be updated to point to the new domain whenever possible.
5. Submitting Redirect Rules on the Baidu Webmaster Platform: As long as there is a consistent pattern between the old and new pages, you can submit redirect rules on the Baidu Webmaster Platform; if there is no such pattern, you’ll have to submit each old-to-new URL pair individually, which is time-consuming and cumbersome. Submitting redirect rules helps Baidu better understand the replacement relationships and facilitates a faster transfer of page authority to the new pages.
6. Check for Broken Links and Submit Them. Whenever a domain name or URL structure changes, broken links are bound to occur, and webmasters often fail to detect many of them on their own. We recommend using a third-party crawler tool to crawl the entire site for links, compiling the collected broken links into a text file on the server, and then submitting the file’s URL via the “Submit Broken Links” feature on Baidu Webmaster Tools. A large number of broken links on a website can negatively impact Baidu’s assessment of the site’s overall quality.

Once you’ve completed the steps above, Baidu will gradually begin ranking the new pages in search results over the next few days. However, the old pages won’t disappear entirely right away; they may even continue to appear sporadically in search results for up to a year. As long as your website’s overall traffic returns to pre-redesign levels, there’s no need to worry too much. Additionally, it is recommended to keep the 301 redirects from the old domain to the new pages in place for as long as possible—ideally for at least six months.