Want to Tank Your SEO? Change Shopify Domains

The other day my friend mentioned that his SEO consultant wanted to move his entire website to a new domain. "To make it easier" for the SEO to work on branding. This is an established brand with years of branding and other SEO work on it.

My response was a snarky "so I guess you're okay with a traffic drop for six months then, right?"

Changing domains is probably one of the biggest shake-ups you can make to an established store.

Sure we can make it "easier", but even then, you're risking a sizable drop in traffic and rankings for months (if not permanently). We'll get into how to limit the damage later but let's start with looking at why this drop happens.

URLs

Fundamentally Google and search engines look at URLs for content to send their searchers to.

Much of that content is grouped onto individual domains that have similar content. For example, ilanadavis.com has content around SEO and more specifically, structured data.

To find those URLs and content, the search engines rely on existing URLs or a sitemap linking to the new URLs. For lack of a better analogy, each link counts as a vote. Each vote carries a different value based on how popular the linking page is. The more links, the more relevant the content, the better the ranking (roughly).

If you rip away all of the content from one domain and move it to another, you can see why this move can damage your SEO. Two important things will happen here:

1. You removed quality content that other websites linked to (who links to you) and
2. You changed your links to content on other websites (who you link to).

This sets up a cascading effect that can damage the rankings for your site and everyone you linked to.

When done improperly, a new domain might cause Google to think your existing site is gone. From there, they'll start to remove all of your search results. Effectively forcing you to start your SEO from the first step.

There are ways to limit the damage of domain changes. All of these combined will never be as effective as not changing the name in the first place. Any change to your site carries the risk of SEO damage.

Configure primary domain in Shopify

In Shopify you'll want to add your new domain and configure it as the primary domain. This will automatically create redirects from your old domain to your new one.

If you're changing a non-primary domain, then you may need to set up redirects manually. For example, if you have an international domain that is switching from row.example.com to world.example.com.

Redirects

The most critical step is to setup redirects, either manually or by changing your primary domain.

Redirects automatically send Google and visitors to the new URL. You'll want to use a permanent redirect (301) which will tell search engines to update their data to use the new URL. (Tip: the standard redirect in Shopify is a 301 redirect, so you don't have to do anything special.)

While redirects make the experience seamless for customers, they come with a cost in search engines. Although this can't be easily measured, I like to think of it this way. One can count a redirected URL to be operating around 90% as effective as before. Meaning if a link counted as "15 points" before, now it would only count for 13 (I made up the points and the actual points don't matter).

Eventually redirected URLs will recover back to 100% with time and if you can get everyone who linked to the old URL to change their links.

Create meaningful redirects

An important thing with redirects is to make sure they go to the relevant URL on the new page.

For example, if you redirect the 20oz red mug product page, make sure it going to the 20oz red mug on the new domain.

Don't point them to your homepage or any other page unless there really is no great option in the new domain.

You don't get points for being lazy here so take the time and redirect releveant URLs on the new domain.

Tell Search Console and GA

Right after the change you'll want to update Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and any other tool that used your old domain.

Shopify will automatically update your sitemap assuming you submitted it to Google Search Console already. You don't need to resubmit it again. However it's still a good idea to check on your sitemap after a few days to make sure Search Console has seen the change.

Check for 404s

After the move for at least a month you'll want to check for 404 errors. Every 404 error should be investigated to make sure a redirect wasn't missed or configured incorrectly.

If you use a SEO crawler like Screaming Frog, it can highlight those 404 pages and what pages linked to the old URLs.

Update internal links

Ideally you've been using Shopify's built-in methods to create internal URLs. As a best practice, always create internal links using a relative URL. That way if you do change domains, your URLs will update automatically.

• Absolute URL: https://www.example.com/products/my-shirt
• Relative URL: /products/my-shirt

If you have ever created an internal link using an absolute URL, this is for you.

Once you have the redirects in place, go through your entire store and change any links that use the old domain.

Keeping a link with the old domain adds an extra step (redirect) that can hurt your SEO, customer experience, and even mess with analytics.

Go through every page, product, etc that has a link to an old page and switch it to a relative URL.

Update backlinks

Reach out to every backlink you have and ask them to update the link to use the new URL. Basically you're having them update the links on their site, just like you did for your internal links.

Getting other people to update your URLs to a new domain may be challenging, do your best.

This will be tedious and annoying but in the end, it can help you recover your SEO traffic faster.

Keep your old domain

Do not cancel your old domain right away. Even after the move is done, you'll want to keep your old domain registration.

If you let it lapse or cancel it, then your redirects will stop working. Search engines will think your old website was deleted instead of moved.

Keep paying for your old domain for at least another year, though keeping it for three years or more is ideal. Domain costs are tiny compared to the SEO implications of losing your old domain.

Limit domain changes

Changing established domains in Shopify is possible, as we've just covered. But it's not a quick and process, at least if you want to keep your SEO working. The more effort you put in, the faster your traffic should recover.

It should also go without saying, but I'll say it anyways...

Never change your domain just before or during the busy season.

You'll end up with a mess on your hands and wish you never had that crazy idea.

Give yourself at least 4-6 months buffer because even with all these precautions, thing can still go south.

Prepare for the worst, hope for the best!