Changing your domain name

What are peoples thoughts on changing the URL of an established website because the focus of the business has tilted?

The existing domain name would still be active (at least for a year) and would direct users to the same website, but the ‘master’ URL that is used for marketing, and displays in the address bar when the website loads would be new.

What are the best practices around this? Can it harm SEO significantly? Does having multiple redirects like this hamper page loading speeds?

Thanks for any input.

no harm to your SEO as long as you do 301 redirects:

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Hello jamie

It is true that when you refer the old url’s with a 301 redirect the loss does not have to be large. But loss will be certain because you’re going to index the website under a new domain name.

The old domain name has built a history in Google. You will lose this history. The new domain name will need to rebuild it.

What’s important is that you use this domain name change to look closely at the site architecture (URL Folder Structure). A good structure ensures high relevance. Something Google looks at and causes the new website pages to be indexed faster.

In short, you will see that various pages will disappear from Google’s ranking and others appear.

Success
Rick

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Hi Jamie,

I would also prefer the same 301 redirect for your website. 301 redirect can help you not losing any value of the page rank and domain authority of your previous website.

And yes, It can harm you SEO slightly by traffic dip to your website. Ranking also might change positions.

Before starting a redirect, first you need to go through the guidelines of Google Redirects and Google Search | Google Search Central  |  Documentation  |  Google Developers and take the list of URL’s available in the website through Link Checker Analysis

i hope this might help you with successful 301 redirection.