As most of you probably remember, I moved this site to a new domain back in January of 2008. Prior to that time, this blog was known as Kyle’s Cove. It has been about 3 months now since the move and everything has settled nicely, with traffic continuing to grow from where it was prior to the move, and I am much happier with this domain name.

For anyone that is considering moving their site to a new domain name, you’ll want to first really think it through and make sure that is what you want to do. Your site will take a hit for a couple months and it can cause some frustration for readers, but it can be worth it in the long run if you do it for the right reasons.

If you’re wanting to move your website, I ran across some great tips from Google to follow when moving your website:

  • Test your processes by moving only one directory or subdomain first. Check to see whether those pages are appearing in Google’s search results before moving your entire site.
  • Don’t just redirect all pages from your old site to the home page of your new site. Try to redirect all pages on your old site to a relevant page on your new site.
  • If you’re thinking about changing your domain and redesigning your site at the same time, consider doing these things separately to minimize the risk of error.
  • Check both external and internal links to pages on your site (which can be done using Google Webmaster Tools) and try asking webmasters to change any links pointing to your site to use the new domain.
  • Don’t allow your old domain to expire until at least 180 days have passed.
  • Add your new site to Google Webmaster Tools, verify you own it and submit an XML sitemap containing all the URLs. Keep your old site too so that you can keep an eye out for any errors.

The bold option above was done by me to emphasize that one, as I felt that was the most important part of the transition.   It helps keep backlinks valid and helps Google’s spiders properly index and replace your posts.