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Scared Sh*tless about losing rankings after a domain name change
Posted by on October 17, 2025 at 4:26 pmMy client is a medical practice (not a dentist) who ranks tremendously well for some local medical searches (ie best dentist in AREA) and also really really well for many specialties nationwide (ie non-invasive bone grafts.).
The practice is growing and changing its name. For example, Dr. Jones is taking on a partner, Dr. Smith. And Dr. Jones will be retiring within a few months. So it makes no sense to continue to call the practice by its current name, Dr. Jones Dentisty (at DrJones-dot-com). So we're planning on renaming it to something like Jones-Smith-Dentistry-dot-com
He has facebook pages, youtube channels, a linked page, etc.
The address, phone, and other info about the practice are not changing. Only the practice name.
I have told them that I am very VERY nervous about changing the domain name because I don't want to lose any of their tremendously valuable rankings.
Can anyone offer some best practices to follow?
Horrible mistakes to avoid?
Overall opinions about doing this?
ANY help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
-Mark
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1 Reply
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You do tend to have a bit of ranking issues for a bit of time after switching domains.
If you setup the 301 redirects properly and make to let Google know in GSC, you will be good.
Companies rebrand, shutdown, get bought out all the time. Google knows this.
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You’re cooked man.
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Domain changes are a big deal, and its almost impossible to avoid some impact (at least in the near term) on search results/rankings.
I would call out one key that’s been very helpful for us-
Minimize *every other* change in the course of the move.
Do not redesign the site.
Do not change the navigation.
Do not update the content significantly.
Keep the same theme/templates and host.
So many shifts like this are led by marketers who are intent on blowing up everything all at once. “Let’s move from this host to that host. Let’s change our CMS. Let’s nuke these pages. Let’s change the navigation.”
Don’t allow that to happen.
Google ranks site for an aggregation of things and while domain changes can be one of the most disruptive, minimizing other changes along the way is super helpful.
Once the domain change has settled down, go ahead and start to work on other updates.
Separate tip-
Do prep to outreach sites that link to your site at present, and be ready to update them about the need to update their URLs.
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We just did a domain change, changed th site from wix to next.js, did a brand name change, and whole rebrand.
301d each page to relevant new page, went like a charm.
Helped that the wix site was a dumpster fire with terrible stats though!
Good luck!
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I have never had a good experience with SEO after changing a site’s domain name. There was always a traffic and ranking drop and it took a long time to recover.
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You should also consider having them change their name to something that doesn’t have the Dr name in the title. That way they won’t run into this again if they add more doctors.
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Simple domain swap and redirect. What’s the big deal?
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I’ve done hundreds of domain migrations for clients. And people always end up coming to me after they’ve screwed up a migration. Here’s my thoughts.
Warm up the domain you’re moving to. Put content on it, a landing page, a few pages, on the same topic. Verify in GSC. Make sure it’s getting crawled and there are no issues with the site. Warm it up as long as you can. Send ppc traffic to it. Get some links.
People screw up migrations when they try to do too many things at once. Go slow. Make content changes ok the site. Get those crawled and indexed. Redesign the site and change URLs if you need to first. Wait until that’s all recognized in Google.
Then make it a domain only migration. Don’t change anything else. Nothing on the site. Domain name only.
301 permanent redirects, use the image of address tool.
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I honestly would just not change the domain like it’s not a huge deal to keep it. I don’t think it’s worth the loss of income
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Keep all pages and the URL structure.
Do one 301 redirect rule.
Setup new domain in search console, upload sitemap.You will be fine, sometimes there’s a 10% drop but if you do this by the book it’s completely fine. 👍👍
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It’s basically a rebrand and shouldn’t interfere with anything if done properly.
There are also plenty of free resources online dedicated to doing it.
But, yeah, your instincts and concerns are valid.
I’ve done a few and didn’t experience any drops in traffic and overall SEO. But I was nervous during all of them.
Is the actual business name changing? If so, you’ll need to have them update their business license and other business-related documents as the name change to their GBP will almost certainly trigger a suspension requiring a video walkthrough and uploading of the new documents.
Otherwise it’s essentially a checklist sort of thing where you cover all your bases and then flick the switch.
Remember to switch the URL in GSC.
Feel free to ask any questions. I’m not looking for work but definitely feel your pain here.
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Warming up the domain is often the difference between having a cocktail after the switch or having many cocktails
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it sounds like more than a huge risk. this needs to be done properly, but even them I’d expect to lose ranking and have to battle back.
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