How to Change Your Domain Name Without Losing Your Web site's Rankings
In 99% of the cases when someone asks us how to change their domain name without losing rankings, our advice is simple...DON'T!
In our experience, most webmasters are far too eager to change their domain names. In fact, unless the new domain is really (and we mean really) outstanding or the old domain is absolutely terrible, the drawbacks to changing a domain name far outweigh the advantages.
Of course there are some good long term reasons to change your domain. Say you've been using a very poor domain name for years, and finally the perfect domain, with your company or brand name becomes available. Sometimes, that's an opportunity just too good to pass up. However, switching domain names should be carefully considered in a long term scenario. Do not switch just because another TLD like .biz opened up allowing you to get companyname.biz or keywordkeyword.info.
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We even advise caution if you get a chance to grab your exact match keyword domain name because exact match domains aren't as powerful as they used to be. Google turned down the boost those domains received over a year ago. That's not to say buying an exact match isn't a good investment, but switching an already established domain over to it may not be the best course of action. Although there is still a small boost for exact match domain names, it's not nearly as important as it used to be.
We're now in a period where brand signals are quite important in addition to relevancy that a keyword domain and links can provide. The brand signals that Google is looking for include: naturally occurring links to your site with your company name / product name, or combo of Brand and Keyword. For example: Chevy Trucks would have Chevy as the brand and Trucks as the keyword. A site that's well established with lots of naturally occurring links over a l...