[ad_1]
I am looking for advice on how I could go about migrating my current site to a new domain as we are undergoing a rebrand/merger.
I need to keep the current domain active with redirects to the new domain, which will be an exact clone of the current site but with new branding + products.
Would it be okay to simply duplicate and upload onto the new domain or is there a way to swap the current domain with the new one without losing SEO and bookmark visitors etc on the current website.
[ad_2]
I would opt to redirect from the old domain to the new one as it is the recommended approach for preserving SEO and existing traffic, in my opinion.
Duplicate your website and upload it to the new domain, keeping the content structure and URLs as similar as possible (you have many duplicator/migration plugins for that, I personally use All in one WP migration).
Redirect all pages from the old domain to the new domain using 301 redirects to notify search engines and users about the permanent move (e.g. via free Redirection plugin).
Update internal links within the new site to new domain URLs (e.g. via this free plugin: https://wordpress.org/plugins/update-urls/).
Keep the old domain active for 3-6 months to minimize disruptions for bookmarked users and allow search engines to fully re-index the new site.
Announce website, social media, and email newsletter migration to alert users about the upcoming change.
That’s it, as I see it.
Please don’t just use simple domain forwarding because it won’t help with SEO and could hurt user experience. Also, don’t delete the old domain as it will lose SEO value and create a bad user experience.
Similar to what u/ivivad said, but there’s an important step you need to take which is to notify Google of the address change. That is done via Gooogle Search Console – you setup both domains in GSC then use the Change Of Address tool on the old domain. This process will transfer your seo juice to the new domain.