Changing your domain name is like changing your name — it’s a dramatic step, and if you’re not careful, people will be confused about your identity. But WordPress domain name changes happen all the time, for a variety of reasons, including rebrands, legal issues, expansions or mergers, changing locations, or the expiration and unavailability of your preferred domain.

Losing your SEO value is a real concern if you don’t carefully plan your migration. This article will guide you through the process of changing your WordPress domain name without harming your search engine rankings.

Before You Begin: Planning and Backups

WordPress domain migrations are a big deal, so the more planning you are able to do ahead of time, the better the results will be on the backend. Having a full site backup of your website is critical before making any changes. You will need to have full access to your web hosting account as well as your database — they will get a lot of use in this process.

You might want to consider using a staging environment to duplicate your website. This will allow you to test plugins and themes for compatibility and make updates before the actual switchover.

Backing Up Your Website

What is involved in a full-site backup? You will want to be sure to include all your site’s themes, plugins, uploads, core WordPress files, content, and settings. There are a few different options for building your backup.

Your hosting provider may offer a service where it manages creating your backup. There are file transfer protocol (FTP) tools, such as FileZilla, that help you manually back up your files to a remote server. You will also need to arrange a database export if going the manual route.

Plugins such as Updraft Plus and BlogVault provide another reliable way to backup your site when changing to a new WordPress domain website. Whichever route you go, be sure to verify your backup before you move forward any further in your migration. Your backup is too important not to make sure it’s intact and available.

Notify Search Engines

Communicating your domain change to Google (and Bing) is crucial to help retain your SEO rankings. Without this notification, the search engines will have to re-crawl, re-evaluate, and re-index your site, resulting in lost SEO value. To get started with Google, its Search Console offers guidance on how to use its “Change of Address” tool to migrate your search results from the old site to your new site. With a significant change, like a migration, you will also need to submit a new sitemap to Google and Bing. This will help the search engines more quickly crawl and index your most important web pages.

During this process, you will also need to verify ownership of the new domain. Google Search Console provides access to sensitive information about your site. Verifying your ownership helps prevent unauthorized agents from tinkering with your site’s search results and negatively impacting its performance.

Update WordPress URLs (Database and wp-config.php)

After notifying the search engines, the next step is to update your WordPress URLs. WordPress stores the website URL in your database and the wp-config-php file. There are a few different ways to update the URLs.

You can go into the database and manually make the changes using phpMyAdmin or WP-CLI . Manual changes to your database require caution and concentration. Another route is making changes to the wp-config.php file. This can be done by updating the constants for WP_Home and WP_SITEURL, which allow you to change the site’s public URL and the absolute path to the WordPress core files.

You can also use reliable plugins like Update URLs or Go Live Update URLs to update, which are designed to simplify updating WordPress URLs. Whichever route you go, it is important to update all instances of the old domain within the database so you don’t mistakenly lose any traffic following your migration.

Set Up 301 Redirects

Another valuable step in helping minimize the domain change SEO impact is setting up 301 redirects, which tell browsers and search engines that a website has been permanently moved to a new URL domain. This can be accomplished by manually updating the .htaccess file of the old domain with code that will automatically guide visitors to the new website.

For those on servers using NGINX, you can change the configurations to implement NGINX 301 Redirects, which make the browser forget the old address entirely and prevent it from trying to access the old address anymore.

There are also plugins available to help manage 301 redirects, including 301 Redirects and Redirection. As with updating your WordPress URLs, 301 redirects are a must-do to ensure that all your traffic is being guided to your new site.

Thoroughly Test Your New Site

With so many small details to manage in moving to your new WordPress domain, you will want to immediately test your new site after the domain switch. In your testing, you should focus your efforts on website functionality, testing links, forms, and images.

Look closely at all the redirects to ensure that old URLs correctly point to new ones. Review your SSL certificate for any errors. Gather an overview of the entire site’s performance. Visitors use a variety of different browsers and devices, so test your website on different platforms to ensure your new WordPress site is accessible and available.

Monitor and Update

Your WordPress domain migration enters a new phase after the switchover. You will need to closely monitor your website traffic and search engine rankings in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to ensure that your efforts have kept your SEO intact. Check for crawl errors and address any issues that come up promptly.

Also, work to update any external links, like backlinks, by communicating with other websites to update their links to your site. Finally, communicate the domain change to your customers on your website and through your social channels to keep them informed about this important change.

Maintaining Traffic and Trust

If you follow these key migration steps of backing up your website, notifying search engines, updating your WordPress URLs, setting 301 redirects, thoroughly testing and reviewing the new site, and continuing to monitor and update as needed, you will have a successful transition to your new domain and keep your SEO value intact. You will retain the traffic and the trust of your visitors.

Migrate to Pressable

Pressable makes it easy to migrate your WordPress domain to our managed hosting platform and retain your SEO. We offer three options to help move your domain. You can manage the process with our Automated Pressable Migration Plugin.

If you are the DIY type, we allow you to manually migrate your site. Alternatively, you can take advantage of our seamless white-glove assisted migration service and let our Customer Success Team manage your migration.

Pressable—part of the Automattic family that also includes WordPress.com, WordPress VIP, and WooCommerce—offers experts with the skills and knowledge to effectively manage your WordPress site.

If you’re considering switching to managed WordPress hosting, schedule a demo to see how Pressable can support your ongoing security and growth.