Wordpress - How to transfer domains without negative SEO
 

So I just updated a friends old site as a favor to a nice clean wordpress job.

He wasn't fully convinced, so I decided to make it on a separate domain (his-domain.com , instead of hisdomain.com).

Well now he wants to go ahead and use his old domain (hisdomain.com), which is hosting his old site on his old server.

So my question is, how do I transfer the original domain to the new wordpress site and host without jacking up his rankings that bad. I realize there is going to be some losses because it's a completely new site.

What he has going for him is domain age and backlinks. I'm thinking the new WP site will do well with his old domain and backlinks.. But I'm curious of the best way to make the transfer while being as safe as possible.

Sincere appreciation.

Use the Duplicator plugin. It's free and works like a dream, though you do need to know how to setup a database to use it.
I've transferred a couple of sites and it's worked perfectly every time. I have read that it's not so great for big sites, in which case just download the wp-contents folder and ftp it to the new host.

Thanks for the reply.

Its a media sized site with a fair amount of content. Never heard of this plugin before.

Is that the easiest way to transfer? I know that strays from my original question a bit.

But basically I have my friends original and old site (www.blahblah.com) and a new I built for him (www.blah-blah.com) but I want to use the old domain with the new wp site.

His old original domain is on a different host as well.

I've never transferred domains in WordPress before.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Moving_WordPress to move the site

http://pixelentity.com/wordpress-search-replace-domain/ has worked like a charm

you could put his new wordpress site on his domain in a folder i.e wp once the transfer is done tested and working enable it from main index

inbound links if different will be 404 errors

you could try this https://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-301-redirects/ i haven't tried this plugin though

not sure to understand. But if you want to redirect blahblah.com to blah-blah.com without losing any SEO (Pagerank, backlin etc.) a 301 redirection thru htaccess will do the job.

I've used the Duplicator a number of times. With smaller sites it works flawlessly, with larger sites I simply downloaded the wp-contents folder by ftp and re uploaded it.
Check it out, as it makes moving a breeze.

The issue is he wants the new site (blah-blah.com) on the old domain (blahblah.com).

But I'm curious about this.. how would a redirect from his old domain (blahblah.com) to his new domain save all of his old SEO?

Well you can simply remove his old site.
And place his new WP site on his original domain.

The built in 404 page in WP will catch all the old incoming traffic to pages that don't exist anymore.
If you want to go fancy make that 404 page with a nice text, ad a link to the homepage and maybe ad a search box (if it doesn't already has that).

Does the new domain already have traffic?
If so, just .htaccess redirect that to the new domain. :thumbsup

Basically with 301 redirection you tell to google old domaine does not existe anymore and It's been replaced by the new one. It works. I did it multiple times.

A very good article with pics. and steps here.

Doing this would completely fuck your site.

Thanks again for the advice guys, TRULY.

The problem with above is he wants the NEW site on the OLD domain. (the aged domain with backlinks galore and good google traffic).

His old site blows.. but it's an oldie.. and he has some good rankings.

Even so, once I switch the new WP site to the old non WP domain, the backlinks will still be active so all I'm really concerned about is:

At this point I'm most concerned with just making a simple and secure domain transfer and pointing the old domain to the new site on new hosting.

::am still reading comments::

Thanks again folks.. means a lot :thumbsup He's a good friend, and the last thing I want to do is fuck his shit up in this final stage.. I'm sure some of his rankings will fall initially.. because the new site doesn't have the same pages/text, etc.. although it's similar.

What you can do with this is simple but it takes some time and effort.

Make an inventory list of his backlinks.
And if you already didn't recreated those pages/posts recreate them in the new WP with the same content.
Redirect the old backlinks to the new WP pages/posts you created.

If you need sample code or extra help just hit me up. :thumbsup

Thanks for the kindness Martin.

I really appreciate all of you fellas experience with this.. I don't think we are going to try to change the new site to match the old site in terms of exact content and such.. part of the reason he needed an update was because his old site sucked badly.. but it was old.. 14 years or so.. one of the reasons he is indexed so well for all of his relative terms.

He just had a single LINKS section on his site.. no blog posts on his old site, but quite a few pages.

At this point I'm really not concerned about his ranking, because of the age of the domain and his backlinks.. I think the new site will index well.

I'm more concerned of the most straight forward way to essentially "switch" the domains.

The old site/domain is on an old shitty hosting plan, and again it's not a wordpress site. The new site (wordpress) is on much better hosting with a better plan.

I'm an advertiser by nature.. so this is definitely not my field of expertise.

The site duplicator plugin sounds like a good idea.. but I really wanted to stay with the new host (the one the new wp site is on), and not revert back to his old host. (installing wp on his old host and using the site duplicator plugin).

So is there any possible way I can essentially "switch" out the domains?

Thanks again for the help regardless fellas. Truly.