The Secret Blueprint to Changing Your Domain Name Without Losing a Single Visitor
Edit the stream details to use your new domain’s URL.
Ensure the existing tracking code is installed on the new domain and working properly. If you plan to track traffic for both domains, make sure to enable cross-domain measurement.
Next steps
The domain switch is done, but a few follow-up steps help ensure everything continues to run smoothly:
- Stay on top of analytics and Search Console: Watch for crawl errors, indexing issues, warnings, and unexpected changes in traffic patterns to catch problems early.
- Update robots.txt: Check your robots.txt file for any hard-coded links to the old domain, such as the sitemap URL.
- Revise social profiles: Update the website URL on all your social media accounts to reflect the new domain.
- Adjust email addresses: Change any email addresses that used your old domain. On WordPress.com, you can use email forwarding for that.
- Migrate backlinks: While redirects should do a good job of preserving the SEO value of your backlinks, it’s a good idea to reach out to websites that have linked to your site and politely ask them to update the links to your new domain.
- Disconnect and cancel the old domain: Monitor traffic and indexing to ensure the new domain has fully replaced the old one in search results before canceling the old domain. Google recommends maintaining 301 redirects for at least 12 months to preserve SEO value.
Change your domain name with confidence
A domain name isn’t just an address — it’s part of the brand and identity of your site and business. Changing it can feel like a risk, but it can also be an opportunity to grow, move forward, or start fresh.
