Switch to The New Domain Name Issue

Since, I did cover so much on the basic thing about web hosting, so I got no such idea on the basic topic that I should discuss about. Suddenly, I thought about an issue on changing the url. For an example a company of beer maker, the Bristol (www.the-bristol.com) wants to change the domain name to be (www.beer-bristol.com).

In this article I want to discuss on the pro and cons of changing the domain name. Well, I think I should point on the pro of changing the domain name first. In this case I do consider on this beer maker company. The most obvious pro on changing the domain name for them here is they are making their domain name (url) to be more SEO friendly by emphasizing the word of beer(make the beer as their keyword) in their domain name.

For the SEO friendly aspect that’s good but what will be happened to user that used to be accessed the web via www.the-bristol.com? They couldn’t reach the site by using the new domain name. That’s the most obvious cons of having the new domain name cuz for sure you’ll lose ton of your existing visitors.

Is it means I mustn’t change the domain name at all? Nah, it’s not like that. You have 2 solutions on that! The first one is making a page that could automatically forward to your new site (redirection page from the old domain name) and the second one is put a link in your old web site to let the users go to the new url.

But there is a problem on those both alternative ways. For the first solution, the problem that will be appeared is you might be lost the search engine listing. Generally (not all the searching engine did), the searching engines hate the redirection page. The old one will be deleted if they see the redirection page (when the spider returns to check your site).That’s mean you have to start the search engine listing from zero. Is that what you wish at?

The problem that been appeared for the second approach is when the visitors come to the old site, they just could see the new domain name asking you to go there. There is a possibility that the visitors feel that lazy to go to the new url. So, by using the second approach you still risk yourself to loose the visitors too on your new sites.

“Well, based on the discussion above, the new url just brings more harm to the new site”. That’s not true; you still could do something to overcome the problem! The best solution is by modifying your .htacess file. But I will not cover it here cuz it’s too long to be in this article and this might be made you bored to read the whole article. I’ll continue with it after this. Adios!