Domain Change
SEO Audits
At SEO Audits IO we help businesses who are wanting to go through a domain change, or, businesses who have already gone through a domain change and have subsequently lost rankings and traffic.
Trusted By Leading Brands
We've helped hundreds of businesses resolve complex SEO issues and achieve sustainable organic growth.
Did your business go through a domain change and now traffic has dropped?
If so, we can help. We charge from £150p/h to help rectify SEO issues as a result of domain name changes, domain extension or consolidation changes.
We’re quick, fast & we solve most domain name change issues within 2-3 weeks, this is often followed by ranking recovery.
Or, are you planning to change your domain but haven’t done it yet?
We help to mitigate and prevent SEO issues & ranking/traffic losses when changing domain, we also help on the recovery aspect of it (post domain change traffic/ranking losses)
£150
Per hour, from
2-3
Weeks to resolution
£299
Pre-migration checks from
10+
Years experience per specialist
Either way - domain changes can be high risk, especially if they aren’t coordinated and executed properly. Domain changes bring with them a lot of complexity, but how much complexity is really down to why the domain is changing and what the objective is.
A common example, a UK business runs a . domain, they want to expand internationally outside of the UK so they decide to change to a .com domain with sub folders for locations.
WHAT WE OFFER
We offer a full set of SEO services for businesses who plan to, who are or who have changed their domains. Our core service offering includes:
Pre Domain Change SEO Guidance & Support / Advisory Services
Pre Domain Change to New Domain Due Diligence Checks
Current & New Domain Checks, Review of Google Search Console Data
Migration strategy (redirects, maps, change of address via google search console)
Pre Launch Validation (ensuring everything is set up correctly)
Post Domain Change ranking loss & recovery services
SEO Auditing (domains, redirects, strategy, migration)
SEO Consulting
WHAT WE CAN HELP WITH
SEO Audits IO can help with all aspects of domain changes, we help businesses to ensure their domain selections are optimal for what they are looking to achieve i.e. ensuring correct CTLD, checking domain history for abuse, content types (wayback) and more. Some of the core things we help businesses looking at changing domains with includes (but is not limited to)
1. Pre-Migration Baseline & Discovery
Full crawl of the old domain (every URL, status codes, titles, metas, canonicals, headings, internal links, schema)
Export organic traffic, rankings, top landing pages, and impressions from Google Search Console (GSC) and analytics
Complete backlink profile export (high value referring domains and pages)
Inventory of all domain variants (www/non www, HTTP/HTTPS, subdomains), sitemaps, robots.txt, hreflang (if multilingual), structured data, and any manual actions or disavow files
Content and performance inventory of high-value pages
2. New Domain Due Diligence
Domain history check (this is critical see below)
Technical readiness: SSL, DNS, hosting, Core Web Vitals targets, crawlability
Content and structure parity planning (or intentional improvements)
3. Redirect & Signal Transfer Planning
1:1 URL mapping (old to best equivalent new URL)
Redirect strategy, internal link updates, sitemap planning, GSC Change of Address preparation, GSC profile setup under DNS to maintain profile when domain redirects and a HTML tag can no longer be provided
4. Staging / Pre-Launch Validation
Full testing of redirects, indexability, canonicals, robots, tracking, and performance on staging
5. Launch & Post-Migration Monitoring
GSC Change of Address tool, sitemap submission, daily/weekly monitoring of coverage, crawl stats, rankings, traffic, and 404s for 30–90+ days
Keep old-domain redirects live for at least 1 year (ideally longer)
WHAT ARE THE BIGGEST POTENTIAL ISSUES, CHALLENGES & RISKS WITH A DOMAIN MIGRATION?
There are lots, even basic mistakes can have a significant impact on organic performance. For example, a simple mistake such as a misconfigured robots.txt file could mean thousands of new URLS are crawled post migration, or that Googlebot is blocked - simple things CAN and do have a high impact.
From our experience working with clients, the highest risks / failures are typically:
Highest impact failures
Incomplete or missing 301 redirects (or redirecting everything to the homepage) which can lead to loss of equity and rankings
Launching with staging blocks still active (robots.txt Disallow or noindex)
Redirect chains/loops or non-permanent redirects (302s)
Failing to use (or correctly use) GSC Change of Address for all relevant variants
New domain carrying negative history (spam, penalties, adult/malware content)
Changing too many things at once (domain + CMS + major redesign + URL structure)
Other major risks
Temporary ranking/traffic volatility while Google re-crawls and re-evaluates (expected; severity depends on execution)
Lost external backlinks if high-value sites are not notified or if redirects fail
Crawl budget waste or duplicate content signals if old and new domains both remain accessible without clean redirects
Analytics/tracking breakage that hides the true impact
Geographic targeting shifts (especially with ccTLDs)
Brand/user confusion leading to lower CTR or direct traffic
Challenges unique to domain moves
This isn’t an exhaustive list but is generally what we tend to see. Domain changes are generally high risk, but, as long as the migration is handled properly you can minimise the risk of losing rankings, traffic & ultimately revenue.
For the sake of a £3k-£5k investment (on average) you can help reduce the risks and increase the probability of a safe domain migration. We’ve seen the catastrophic impact that an improperly executed domain change had on businesses, some losing £100,000s in revenue until rankings were recovered.
Google needs time to associate the two domains (often described as a “clusterization” or verification period)
Link equity transfer is never 100% instantaneous or perfect
Large sites take longer; recovery averages can stretch to many months in imperfect cases
Old domain must stay under your control and keep serving redirects for a long time
HOW OUR PROCESS WORKS
So, first we have to assess the kind of support your business requires, this will very much depend on not only your asks but whether you’ve got to a specific point i.e.
- Have you just started thinking/planning a domain change?
- Have you decided on a domain already?
- Have you purchased the domain?
- Have you already done the migration & now seeing issues?
Wherever your business is on its journey we can provide support / guidance to help.
The typical process is:
You submit an enquiry via our website
We review your enquiry and get clarification on your situation
We provide an overview of what we think you need and a cost
We onboard you as a client (or for just x consulting hours)
Work begins
WHY CHOOSE SEO AUDITS IO FOR YOUR DOMAIN MIGRATION SUPPORT?
Because we’ve helped a large volume of businesses globally with domain migrations from pre-domain planning through to migration auditing & post migration support. We have extensive SEO expertise, a highly experienced team & are recognised & trusted.
Each member of our SEO team has no less than 10 years SEO experience dealing with clients hands on.
We have SEO specialists in-house that have dealt specifically with all aspects of domain migration.
WHAT ARE YOU BUYING?
If you work with us it depends on the scope of the work - most clients are buying SEO consulting hours (as time) where we provide SEO auditing, analysis and recommendations in PDF / Google Slides formats.
We provide recommendations documentation with prioritisation, so you understand the highest SEO impact issues first, and so swift action can be taken.
You are also buying our support should you need us to liaise with developers or to do the implementation work for you.
HOW MUCH DOES DOMAIN MIGRATION SUPPORT COST?
This will vary a lot depending on where your business is at, the size of the business and the complexity of the migration. We provide some general costs below, but, for a bespoke quotation please get in contact to see how we can help. Typical costs are:
£150
SEO Consulting & support from £150 per hour
£299
Pre-migration domain checks from £299
£1
Pre & Post migration audits with support - £1.5k - £5k
Generally for most straightforward domain migrations costs are typically around £500-£1k. More complex migrations i.e. much larger sites, sites with internationalisation costs can typically range around £5k.
WHAT ARE KEY CONSIDERATIONS FOR DOMAIN CHANGES/MIGRATIONS?
This is based on our experience with domain migrations, typically we check:
Domain Checks We Run
We always audit the target domain thoroughly before acquiring or migrating to it:
- Wayback Machine / Internet Archive for past content (spam, adult, phishing, doorway pages, etc.)
- Backlink profile history (spammy or manipulative links)
- Previous ownership changes, WHOIS history, and any known penalties or manual actions
- Redirect history (was it previously used as a redirect farm?). A “clean” looking domain with bad history can sandbox or suppress the new site for a long time
- ccTLDs (e.g., .co.uk, .de, .fr) act as strong geographic signals. Google treats them as country-targeted by default. Excellent for pure local focus, can limit international visibility
- gTLDs (.com, .org, .io, .ai, etc.) are treated as neutral/generic (Google does not give keyword-in-TLD advantages). Better for global or multi-country targeting. Moving from a strong local ccTLD to a gTLD (or vice versa) changes geo-targeting signals and can cause temporary ranking shifts in local search results. Plan hreflang, Search Console international targeting, and content localization carefully if this is part of the move
- Keep the old domain under your control indefinitely if possible and maintain 301s (Google recommends at least 1 year; many experts suggest longer for full signal transfer and AI/citation systems)
- Update everything external: Google Business Profile, social profiles, directories, email signatures, paid ads, partner links
- Verify all GSC properties for old and new domains (including all variants/subdomains) and submit Change of Address for each relevant old property
- Prefer pure domain moves with minimal other simultaneous changes when possible
- Expect and budget for monitoring and rapid fixes in the first 30–90 days
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Yes we can, quite often we get client bookings where the migration has already taken place & where the client has seen a notable decline in enquiries, sales and a loss of rankings/traffic.
Recovery is almost always possible, however it will depend on the migration and the historic/target domain performance & issues to ascertain what a recovery timeframe is likely to look like.
We recommend that you get in contact with us before making any further changes. Returning to your original domain doesn’t automatically mean your rankings & traffic will come back, if a domain migration has been improperly executed there’s usually a window of time from resolution to recovery - however this is entirely dependent on a lot of factors such as the domains and their history, what went wrong during migration, if there are any issues with spam, improperly configured DNS etc.
In most cases, a domain reversion is not required.
Yes it is possible, domain changes can sometimes be beneficial, there’s lots of considerations but, times where domain name changes can be of benefit:
- Where the current domain has consistent ranking issues for years and is suppressed i.e. no matter what you do rankings do not seem to improve
- Where the current domain has a lot of history relating to previous owners of the domain i.e. old sites, legacy ranking issues i.e. sites hit heavily by older core updates (panda, penguin, hummingbird etc.)
- Where the current domains extension does not match the country of operation i.e. the wrong CTLD
- If multiple smaller CTLDS are merged into a .com and given a stronger unified link profile
- If the target domain is an exact match or partial match keyword + with brand - EMD’s do still carry weight although less from a brand perspective
Some sites we help with domain migrations do see increased performance post domain change, so it is possible, however, each case / scenario is different i.e. niche, how much trust there is in the old domain vs new domain, how much link equity is worth passing over etc.
Get Domain Change SEO Support
We help to mitigate and prevent SEO issues & ranking/traffic losses when changing domain, we also help on the recovery aspect of it (post domain change traffic/ranking losses)
Every year globally millions of businesses go through domain changes, some because their brand has been acquired, others because of expansion into other markets, some because of a complete re-brand.
Tell Us Where You Are In The Move
Planning it, mid-migration or already live and losing traffic — send us the detail and we will advise on the right support.
