Have a new website which is also on a new domain? Looking to forward your current domain to your new domain? We’ve all been there … we’ve all had the fear of losing all of our organic and paid SEO that we have heavily invested in to bring ourselves to the top of Google. Fear not! Major search engines use metrics on both the domain level and the page level to determine rankings. Therefore, you can still save some of your SEO so long as you follow WMiW’s checklist.

Create a sitemap for your old domain ('xml-sitemaps website' recommended)

Add Backlinks on old domain to new domain

Set up the new domain and make it live

Register and verify both domains with Google Webmaster Tools

Create a custom 404 page (404page or 404 plugin recommended) for old domain which suggests visiting new domain

Create 301 redirects (Redirection plugin recommended)

Submit your old sitemap to Google and Bing

Fill out the Change of Address form in Google Webmaster Tools.

Create a new sitemap and submit it to the engines. (This will tell them about any new URLs that were not present on the old domain)

Wait until Google Webmaster Tools updates and fix any errors it indicates in the Diagnostics section.

Monitor search engine results to make sure new domain is being properly indexed.