How to move your WordPress Blog to a new domain – Promoting the change
In the last article, we spoke about the general process for transferring your WordPress Blog over to a new domain, and most importantly making it work. Now we need to talk about a few things that, at least from my experience, should be done before the domain transfer is completed. I’m talking about getting your new domain indexed, and of course, generating some buzz.
With any redirection, if done right, all of your old URL’s that are listed in Google should automatically redirect to the appropriate page on the new domain, however, having your site indexed, or at least, have the ball rolling with getting your new domain indexed is still very important. There are many ways that you can aid this transition, and I stress that this can be very varied depending on the niche and the webmaster. Choose your own way, and take this as a basic guideline.
My advice is to first, submit your new domain to Google for crawling, then add the new domain to your Google Webmaster Tools, and submit a site map along with it. Another extremely important factor is to submit a change of address request through your Webmaster Tools. This is the fastest way to let Google know that you are redirecting from your old domain to the new domain. This is always a fast track way to make sure that your site is indexed, and in my last domain name transition, indexing of the home page took less than 24 hours.
At the same time, use all the social networks that you use to generate buzz about the impending domain change. Install some new features on the new domain that people will like, create a press release about your new domain name and these new features, and communicate on Social Networks about these changes and improvements.
Another very important factor here is that you will be changing to a new domain name that does not have any PR or even an Alexa rank. Although all of your previous back links will still redirect to the new domain, these will not count, as they are not back links directly to your new domain. So, you will also need to get active and create more and more back links to your new domain name. Contact sites that have created back links for you and ask them to update your links as well.
The most important thing here is to not rush into things too fast. Domain name propagation can take the better part of three days to complete, and in all essence, you should take as much time as you need to make sure that your new domain is indexed and that you generate buzz and back links. Not too much time though, as you don’t want to have pages indexed that are inaccessible for long time frames.
Lastly, do not forget your blog directory listings. It is vital that you do not overlook these, as they do generate a ton of links for most people, they are vital back links, and they are your front to the wider community who have not discovered your blog yet. Make sure to update these links a few days before the domain name transition so that they synchronize with the transition.
So, now you should have generated a ton of buzz, you should have at least some URL’s in the process of being indexed, and you are just about ready to go. Shortly, I will post the finale to this article which will cover how to redirect your old URL to your new domain name.
Remember, the most important thing here is to take your time, and do it right. A slip up here could cost you in the long run. And as always, if you have any tried and tested ways that have worked for you, please post them below.
