Contents
Introduction
Arrival of the new gTLDs (generic top levels domains) has become a game changer in the Worldwide web (WWW). If the domain name of your website contains unattractive and unnecessary long terms joined by hyphens, you don’t need to worry anymore since you can utilize the opportunity provided by the various new gTLDs like .agency, .photography, .plumbing, .boutique and others. These new gTLDs can assist you to change the website’s domain name of your business to a brandable, shorter and more memorable domain name. However, it’s important that you follow the appropriate steps when transferring your site to the domains in order to prevent it from having a negative impact on your search engines optimization (SEO).Importance Of These Steps
They ensure that you do not suffer traffic loss from the search engines because of the 404’s, de-indexed pages and keywords vanishing from the first page. They also ensure that you get various opportunities; which are normally missed during such project; of marketing by gaining new customers. These steps will help the team project to be successful by ensuring that communicate the changes internally, keep deadlines and you involve right people.Steps Of Transferring Your Site To New Generic TLD (Top Levels Domain)
Set Up The Page Of ‘Coming Soon’
Once you purchase the new gTLD, ensure that you place the page of ‘coming soon’ on it a few weeks before you begin to transfer all of your content files from your old website to that new site. This ensures that the web search engines will still be able to index that new page. Additionally, it will allow them to be aware that your site is not parked and it’s real. Making this page look great is not essential. The main purpose of its creation is to ensure that the search engines can index the new page. You can write about 3 to 4 lines containing original content so that it can be indexed easily.Test By Transferring Part Of The Content
If you’re the one in charge of the dynamic site, handling its web content during the change can turn out to be formidable experience. You’ll need to utilize the 301 redirect for every content page you transfer so as to pass most value into the new website URL. Rather than transferring all the content at the same time, you should select one section of the site to observe if it appears in SERPs. Utilize the 301 redirect from old web pages into the new ones so as to prevent duplicate content. Transferring part of the content first will help you determine if everything is working before moving to the next step. Ensure that you monitor for the 404 errors for 2 weeks, before moving the remaining contentTransferring All Remaining Content To The New Site
You can then finally transfer the files from your old website to that new TLD site. Your provider of web hosting services has various tools that will assist you to transfer the files. You simply need to log in at your account of web hosting or contact the service provider to make inquiries about the issues you may encounter about that matter. You should leave the old domain name to stay live for about one month or after 2 weeks of launching the new URL because it may take some weeks for the new pages to be indexed by the search engines.Create URL Redirect And Site Map
After you have successfully moved all the files, you must then direct the web search engines to your new domain from the old one. When you are obtaining the new domain name for your site, the URLs will certainly change. Regardless of whether your aim in SEO is taking the performances to next level or protecting the existing search performances, you’ll need to have a redirect strategy. Because the 301 redirects tend to be important for the search engine optimization, you must compare your redesigned website URLs and the old site URLs. There are various tools that you can utilize in creating the sitemap. In case of URL redirects map, you can create the spreadsheet having 2 columns, one for the old website and the other one for the new website.It is worth noting that there are 2 redirect types namely the 301 and 302 redirect. That 302 redirect tends to be the temporary redirect that informs the web search engines so that they can read and utilize the new website’s contents but not stop checking your old site since it will come back. On the other hand, the 301 tends to be permanent and informs the web search engine that your new site domain will replace that old one, so that it will transfer the old website’s page ranking, visitors and authority to that new site.
When you are moving to the new gTLD, the 301 redirect tends to be ideal indicating you must therefore make sure that you perform the direct on all the pages of your old website. In order to confirm that the transfer have successfully taken place, you can utilize the 301 redirect checker sender by using the ‘address change tool’ at the console of Google Webmaster. This will ensure that Google is informed about the moving of your website to the new one. Additionally, it’s essential to renew that change of your address at the interval of 180 days.