Is it safer to do rel=”canonical” instead of 301 redirect? 301 redirecting an old domain to a new one? Think again, and think good!
A good friend of mine 301 redirected a domain name/website, with 700K+ monthly users, to a new domain.
He’s done everything right, in terms of the redirection, and site/content/pages migration.
The guy owns over 30 websites, most of them with over 500K monthly users, some with over 3 million. He knows what he’s doing, and the 301 redirection was supposed to be a simple and seamless process of domain migration.
Yet, the traffic dropped to 50% of the pre-migration level, in 2 weeks, and never recovered to the previous levels, ever since.
❓- This makes you think, is it worth migrating a domain?
❓- Should the domain migration be the last resort, and avoided whenever possible?
❓- Should you do rel=”canonical” (on old domain) instead of 301 redirect? Is it safer, and is it effective?
🤓 He’s about to test that ☝️ on a new migration he’s planning (I will share the results here).
This might not be relevant for a small website with up-to 500/1000 daily users in low competition niches, but one should definitely think twice with a domain migration in a super-competitive niche.
See an interesting discussion here:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ferenczkaszoni_seo-activity-6707552030942089216-WeZh