Wordpress, transferring a site to another domain: procedure, tips and recommendations of specialists

Moving a site to another address can be for various reasons. New resources are constantly appearing that offer better conditions. Therefore, through Wordpress transferring a site to another domain can initially cause a lot of difficulties. The main thing is that the portal administrator outlines, according to the instructions in the article, a plan that optimizes the entire process of moving to a new resource and at the same time significantly reduces the risk of errors.

Key stages

Using Wordpress, moving a site to another domain can be done in just a few steps. However, each portal is distinguished by its scale and promotion. It is important to consider every nuance in this.

Before you start moving the site, it is important to decide on all stages of the work. To optimize the whole process, you need to make a plan.

It can be divided into the following three points:

1. Reasons to move to another domain. Evaluation of the new system and the time to transfer all information.
2. Pre-launch, migration planning. Before you migrate, you need to determine the exact plan. You should outline the process, understand what will change, and keep under control all actions during the main work.
3. Starting with a new domain. All preparation work ends and the practical part begins. It is important to have a well-established plan for each action, since any deviation can subsequently cause malfunctions and system errors.

After each action, it is necessary to test the system and portal for possible malfunctions.

Migration completion and testing

As soon as the new domain is up and running, users move to the last stage of migration. Now you need to perform a series of checks to make sure that everything works as expected, and that visitors and search engines receive the necessary information from the installed resources.

If everything is done correctly, visitors and search engines will understand that the owner of the resource has moved to a new address. In addition, the correct execution of the action will significantly reduce the drop in traffic and increase the rating of the resource. Through Wordpress, the transfer of the site to another domain can be carried out automatically. But, as users and experts note, translation actions are not always carried out correctly, which leads to errors and interruptions in work.

Domain migrations, as you know, are actually common practice. With a small amount of organization, discipline and technical rules, you can switch to a new domain in just a few days, while maintaining the promotion in the search networks and portal users.

When a change of location is required

There can be many reasons. Through Wordpress, you can transfer a site to another domain at any time. There are no system restrictions and established procedures for this.

There are several main reasons when moving the portal to another place is required. Many large resources change several domain names in their lifetime. This is a normal practice.

Basic to change the location:

1. Rebranding. One of the most common reasons for domain migration is a general change in the appearance, design, and name of the business. Changing the domain to display a new brand can create problems for both search engines and visitors to the resource. Therefore, it is important to notify regular customers, and to place a notification with redirects to a new place on the old portal.
2. Going to a specific country or international domain. Another common time for domain migration is the transition from a universal domain (such as .net or .biz) to another. Using a common country-specific address (officially called a TLD or state-specific top-level domain) is preferred for many sites to enter the local market. Alternatively, you can use several different directions tied to a top-level domain (TLD). The common motivation for this is the combination of several sites, each of which is intended for a separate country, into one universal portal.
3. Switching from a hosted service to your own domain. Often websites start on shared hosting services such as a blogging platform or website builder such as WordPress.com, Squarespace or Tumblr. Usually they are located in a subdomain (subdivisions of an address, each of which can act as a separate website). Updating to your own address is a great idea when you need to get more attention from your audience.

Migrating a site to Wordpress may also be required due to local restrictions. If legally the information cannot be placed on a resource in a certain state, a change in the location of the main server will circumvent this limitation. It is worth considering that the legislation in the field of information policy and the Internet varies in each country.

Preparing to start the migration

The transfer of the site to Wordpress begins with the preparation of all the necessary tasks. After the user has outlined a transition plan for himself and outlined all the conditions, it is necessary to proceed to implementation. Site migration does not have to be fast.

You must understand that even if integration occurs within a few hours, global services and search engines will not quickly index the resource. Transferring a Wordpress site to another portal will take up to 48 hours, which will reduce the risk of malfunctions.

Having a plan and collecting all the useful data that can be obtained before launch, the owner of the resource has a greater chance of succeeding. The main thing is not to do the work randomly. It is important to keep all information to the maximum and transfer it to a new address.

1. Setting up a new portal

The transfer of the Wordpress site to the server begins with the development of the template. To do this, you need to use a new resource and integrate into it all the graphic elements necessary for work. Administrative control panels are also connected here.

At this stage, the following actions are carried out:

1. Verification of information. Before making the transition, it’s important to know the history of the new portal. It could have tools for indexing or connected additional resources. It is important to first disable all plugins and modules, as they can disrupt the operation of the new site. The Google Search Console provides detailed information and is completely free. Statistics will show all the activity of the resource and help prepare for the transfer of information to the server at a new address.
2. Placement of an advertising page on a new domain. The page will introduce a new brand or talk about the imminent opening of the resource. Search engines recognize when a new domain becomes active, therefore, presence recognition eliminates the potential delay in transmitting an existing ranking.
3. Compiling a complete list of all URLs on the site. All addresses that can be found on request should be collected. To do this, you must crawl the website to find all the URLs that Google sees. Then the CMS function is used to compile a list of all addresses (if any), collect data from Google Analytics and even external tools that show all the pages that other web portals linked to.

Transferring a Wordpress site to a local server makes it possible to save a valid copy of all the data. Do not neglect backup, as this will allow you to return to the original version of the resource when errors occur.

2. Audit of the current site

In addition to developing a plan and testing all systems, you must check the new address.

The transfer of the site to the new Wordpress domain should be carried out only after a full audit of the source, as it may be subject to restrictions. Development control makes it possible to calculate possible errors and problems with the system.

To do this, the user must perform the following steps:

1. Calculation of problems. Using a scan and tools such as Search Console, you need to identify any errors that should be fixed before migration.
2. Corrections of inaccuracies. After that, all existing redirects, links to non-existent pages (known as 404 errors), and software errors that the console may report are searched. Later they will be needed for comparison.
3. Collection of all external links pointing to the domain. This will help not only identify all the URLs, but also identify the most important external links.
4. Integration into a new network name. For this, the ISP Manager and Duplicator plugins are used, which allow automatic copying of all codes and settings to a new resource.

Modules can significantly accelerate the transition to a new resource.

3. System Testing

To verify integration, testing is required.

It consists of the following actions:

1. Rating current rating. To find out how successful the migration was, you need to know how well the site is currently working. If you use software to track rankings, targeted keywords, you need to carefully study them, noting which URLs are ranked by the most important phrases.
2. Estimated current traffic. To do this, create a spreadsheet using the data from the analytics package to record visits, sessions, conversions, bounce rates, and everything that matters to the site.
3. Indexing score. In the Webmaster Tools search console, you need to pay attention to how many URLs are indexed. Next, an XML sitemap is compiled to match all the specified links and addresses.
4. Prepare advertisements for the most important keywords. If migration takes time, you should make sure that there is a backup plan that will be available for those terms that are important for the site to compensate for any shortcoming.

There are various tools for resource migration. Migrating a site with Wordpress Duplicator is possible. But experts recommend using the tool only for small portals that do not contain plugins and extensions, since automatic transfer can disrupt the operation of all algorithms.

4. Creating locations on a new resource

The WordPress theme is transferred to another site after full information integration. First, a common template is created, similar to the old portal. After downloading the information, you can fully transfer the design.

An XML sitemap is a file that allows you to define all the important addresses related to a new resource. When the portal is launched, this file is provided to search engines so that all links are accessible on the global network.

After this, do the following:

1. Create a custom 404 page (page not found) for the current domain. This message should suggest visiting the new domain and be ready to start the migration.
2. Match all redirects. Combine all existing URLs with new ones.
3. Prohibition of indexing a new site until it is ready. In addition to the landing page, you should prohibit the addition of information to search engines. This can be done using the robots.txt file (it is used to provide instructions to web robots or crawlers) and using meta = noindex tags, which are asked by search engines not to include the page in their Internet index.

Blocking will eliminate the full indexing of the resource. This is necessary so as not to lower the rating of the portable site.

5. Check redirects

It is important to check related links. At the time of the transfer of the resource, they give the opportunity not to lose traffic and rating in the search engine.

To do this, do the following:

1. Create and verify redirects. It is important to note that 301 redirects should be used - this is an instruction added to the server that tells the user or system the moved page and its new address. In the case of search engines, the function also instructs to transfer all the authority associated with the old URL to the new one.
2. Validation of Google Analytics tags. To save data, users must ensure the uninterrupted and complete safety of Google Analytics tags (or their chosen analytics package) in the new domain. The site development version is checked before launch.

Even though this is the same website, you need to be sure that important elements, such as analytic application codes, have been saved.

6. Test runs with a new address

During the startup process, there are several important elements to implement. It is important to comply with each item in the plan and continue to integrate services to the new address.

At the first launches, the following actions are performed:

1. Launching a portal on a new domain. Publishing the processed site to a new domain (which is likely to be very similar to the current site, but with updated internal links).
2. Launch all internal applications. Disabling password protection, meta robots, noindex tags, and a line that denies access to the robots.txt file. Now all search engines can crawl the site and see the content in it.
3. Implementing 301 redirects. Return to the original domain, transfer 301 redirects to the new portal version. It is preferable to do this for each source URL, including those that have already been redirected. Thus, any old links now point directly to the new resource, and not through the second URL on the old one.

If a 404 error occurs in Wordpress after the site transfer, you need to check whether everything was correctly done in the third paragraph. Forwarding errors cause malfunctions in the display of a particular transom resource.

7. Using Google tools to change the address

The search console has a convenient feature called the address change tool. She tells Google that this domain has now been transferred to another. To do this, you must confirm both addresses.

To establish a system and integrate all search tools, you must:

1. Activate Google services to verify a new domain. The Search Console uses the Get as a Googlebot Robot tool for the homepage and the most important URLs. Make sure that the page displays correctly (Google sees the page like visitors do). Then use the "Submit to Index" option for this URL so that, after a request, Google indexes the page.
2. Submitting an XML sitemap. Again, in the Search Console and Yandex Webmaster Tools, send the XML file of the site. This will encourage Google and Yandex to crawl all the URLs in it. This will allow you to see how many of these pages are indexed, and this number should increase during the first few days after the migration, possibly to a number similar to that achieved in the old domain.
3. Check redirects. Using the crawl tool during the testing phase, enter all the URLs from the old domain into the list and scan them. Using a crawler, make sure that each address successfully redirects to a new domain.
4. Validation, renaming and annotation of Google Analytics. Go to your Google Analytics profile and use the real-time report to make sure analytics is working correctly. Then you need to add an annotation to note when the migration was started (so that administrators can see how it affects traffic) and rename profiles and views depending on the situation.

8. Actions after full integration

After the site has been completely transferred, it is necessary to monitor every action that takes place in it.

In addition, there are a number of actions that must be performed in the near future after the first launch on the new domain.

These include:

1. Creating new links to a new domain. To make search engines crawl a new domain and increase its recognition, you need to create a promotion for the site. Thus, new links will appear, and they will be found and crawled by Google and other search engines. PR around the new portal is a great way to promote it in the ranking of search queries.
2. Monitoring indexing numbers. Using the Sitemaps and Index Status tools in the Search Console, you need to regularly check how many URLs are indexed by Google. If administrators set up Yandex Webmaster Tools, it also shows how many pages this search engine has added to its index.
3. Scan a new site for errors. You should regularly check the new domain for errors or problems that visitors or search engines may find. - . , .
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Total

This process may seem complicated at first glance, and the plan is large, but they should not be neglected. Only eight steps and several days are enough for the site on the new domain to work with the same rating, and its users will not notice that the resource has changed its address and location.