Without the proper site migration plan in place, terrible things could happen to your website. More importantly, without the proper 301 redirects in place, you’re most likely going to face these 5 BIG issues that arise when changing domain names:

1. Loss of Search Engine Rankings – you can run the risk of dropping out of the SERPs all-together; not fun!

2. Loss of Link Popularity – the old domain’s link popularity will be gone & you’ll have to start all over again…this is going to take awhile

3. Loss of Traffic - unless 100% of visitors to your site comes from direct traffic and they all know you’ve changed your domain name, you could lose tons of traffic from Search Engine’s (because you’re no longer ranking for anything), from direct traffic & link referrals because the old domain links are now dead and not redirecting to the new domain.

4. Loss of Conversions/Sales – this includes emails, phone calls, contact forms, online sales, newsletter sign-ups, document downloads, quote requests, etc.

5. Loss of Your Site’s Online Visibility - if your site can’t be found in the Search Engine’s, can’t be found by following a link on another site and can’t be seen by typing the old domain (since this is what people are used to) in the address bar – you’ve officially lost your online visibility

*If you learn nothing else from this entire blog:, please take away this important piece of advice: You MUST implement 301 redirects from the old domain to the new domain or else you’ll lose EVERYTHING & have to start from scratch…