changing domain name - best practice to not lose SERP

unwashed potato! · 17 Jun 2018 at 01:08

so in the coming weeks i'll be changing one of my business names from 123.com to abc.com

the structure of the site will change and the services/pages on the site some will have disappeared all together with nothing replacing them.

what would be the best way to not lose and of the value google have given the old site and have it transferred as much as possible to the new one?

gord · 19 Jun 2018 at 11:14

301 redirects from all of the old content to as much of the new content as possible, where it makes sense. There's a few ways to implement 301 redirects but if you've got a htaccess file I'd use that method.

unwashed potato! · 23 Jun 2018 at 22:58

thanks. is there a good way to know that the user has come from the old website address so i can display a little "welcome to the new site" style message only to those user?

gord · 25 Jun 2018 at 10:45

Fairly sure the answer is no said:
thanks. is there a good way to know that the user has come from the old website address so i can display a little "welcome to the new site" style message only to those user?

You could do something like this: https://moz.com/community/q/display-a-message-after-301-redirect

Essentially add a parameter to your URL that the new page picks up to display a message.