What Happens To Your Links When You Change Domains

Changing domains is a decision you should spend some time on and research properly before you take the big plunge because you will suffer in the search results for some time.

I’ve already written about how to get your links indexed after changing domains so you should also check to make sure your links have been redirected properly which you can also do using Google Webmaster Tools.

Here’s an article on the Google Webmaster Blog which talks about how to discover your links in GWT

When you change domains, even though you can create a 301 permanent redirect so all your URL’s arrive at exactly the same content on your new domain, the link juice will become diluted.

Here’s why:

If you have 100 links coming from 20 different domains, you’ll find many of them now come from one single domain, your old domain.

Its better to have 20 links coming from 20 related domains rather than 100 links coming from mostly unrelated domains or coming from only 10 different domain sources.

The reason for this is because they are redirected from your old domain and the search engines count them as being from one source which is nowhere near is good as having them come directly from different domain sources.

The result of this is your domain authority and trust will not be nearly as good therefore your search engine results will not be nearly as high resulting in less traffic.

Old Domain Links

New Domain Links

While i have more links according to Google Webmaster Tools, the source of the links has changed since i changed domains and reduced by more than 50%

The fix: Focus more time and effort on writing more content and increase the time you spend on link building. Also fix any 404 page not found errors which you can easily complete using Google Webmaster Tools.

Personally, i have never spent much time on link building and try and focus on creating real solutions to real problems all related to the overall topic of my site.

I read a really good article recently on SEOmoz about the relevance of content and why relevance is the most important Seo factor. Actually your content should not just be relevant but Vital & Useful which are even more important than just relevance.

Time will tell what happens over the next few weeks and months so i will report back on how the change is effecting my traffic from the Google & Bing SERPS.

I’ll be posting my site stats here in about a weeks time to show you exactly how things are going which will show the days before i made the change and several weeks afterwards.

Next time, we’ll take a look at what happens to your keyword rankings when you change domains.

Did you suffer from any broken links when you changed domains?

What happened to your links when you changed domains?