Walkthrough · Intermediate · an afternoon plus monitoring
How to Move a Website to a New Domain
Rebrand onto a new domain while keeping the rankings and the returning visitors — a hands-on walkthrough in plain words that names the classic mistake before you reach it.
The short answer
One line covers it: rebrand onto a new domain while keeping the rankings and the returning visitors — a intermediate-level job of roughly an afternoon plus monitoring.
Below is the full run of steps, the error most people trip over, and the short cut worth remembering. On Hosting & Domains plans several steps are already automated away — the guide marks each one.
By the Hosting & Domains team · Reviewed 18 August 2026
Intermediate
Experience required
5
Stages, start to finish
Free
Support included
Proven
On the platform itself
No prior knowledge assumed — a hosting account, a browser and afternoon plus monitoring of attention is the whole entry requirement. Every instruction runs on our platform exactly as printed, and carries over to any standard cPanel host.
First rule: read the snag section before you start, not afterwards. It was distilled from the tickets of everyone who tried the other order.
The whole job in one view
Over the whole job, you will get the site running on the new name, redirect each page to its match, tell google about the change, track down every stale mention and keep the old name for good.
Every stage is a few minutes of unhurried clicking — the total depends mostly on how well you already know the control panel. The detailed instructions are further down; read the whole path once before you begin.
The error nearly everyone hits
Sending the whole of the old site to the new homepage. Search engines read that as 'these pages have gone', and the deep content carrying most of your traffic falls out of the index within weeks.
Forewarned is genuinely forearmed here. This one mistake accounts for most of the frustration the topic ever causes — and it disappears entirely once somebody points it out.
The support desk's own short cut
Change one thing at a time. Move the domain and leave the hosting alone, or move the hosting and leave the domain alone, but never both in one weekend, or you will not know which change caused which symptom.
A minute spent now repays itself every time this job comes round again — and like almost every hosting job, come round it will.
Where this platform takes work off you
Some steps in this guide exist only because hosting traditionally forced them on you. Here the SSL issues itself, the copy is taken daily without being asked, and one-click installers remove the manual setup. What is left is the part that was always genuinely yours.
Stopped mid-guide at an awkward hour? That is exactly what round-the-clock support is for — say which step you are on and we take it from there.
A quick platform makes for a short guide
Tutorials written against imaginary hosting go stale fast. Ours are written against the real thing: the same panel, installer and defaults waiting in your account.
NVMe storage and LiteSpeed caching sit under every tier, the smallest plan included — that is the floor here, not an upgrade.
- Every step checked exactly as published
- The snag named before it arrives
- The dull steps taken out of your way
- People reachable at any hour you stall
Why Hosting & Domains
Standard on every plan
Taken from real tickets
These guides came out of the support queue, so every snag flagged is one people genuinely hit.
Every undo written out
Any step that could bite is marked, together with the exact way to wind it back.
The dull parts automated
SSL, backups and installs look after themselves here, leaving the guide to cover only what is genuinely yours.
Jargon never charges you
Every term is defined on the spot or linked to the jargon buster — nothing assumes prior knowledge.
Help that keeps your hours, not ours
Stuck on step three at midnight? Support answers at any hour, mid-walkthrough included.
Honest about how big it is
Rebrand onto a new domain while keeping the rankings and the returning visitors is a intermediate-level job — set aside an afternoon plus monitoring, with the platform-absorbed steps marked.
Quick Start
Order placed to site online
- 1
Get the site running on the new name
Copy everything over, or attach the new name to the account, then correct internal links and the platform's own site-address settings. Walk the whole site under the new name before anybody else gets to.
- 2
Redirect each page to its match
Send a 301 from every old address to its exact counterpart. Pouring the lot into the new homepage destroys the deep-page rankings that made careful migration worth the trouble.
- 3
Tell Google about the change
Use Search Console's change-of-address tool alongside the redirects, keep both properties verified, and submit the new sitemap. The redirects do the real work; this prepares Google to expect them.
- 4
Track down every stale mention
Analytics, ad platforms, social bios, email signatures, directory listings, and whichever backlinks you can persuade somebody to update. Each surviving mention of the old name is a slow leak that never quite closes.
- 5
Keep the old name for good
Go on renewing the old name and leave its redirects running. They are permanent plumbing, not launch scaffolding to be taken down once things look settled.
Built In
Fitted to every plan
- No set-up charge at any point, and no joining fee
- A daily copy, with restores you run yourself from the panel
- Webmail in the browser plus IMAP, POP and SMTP for any client
- The name's first year included when you order annually
- Spam and virus screening on every mailbox by default
- Money back within 30 days on hosting plans, 7 on reseller
- Staging copies for trying a change before it goes live
- DDoS filtering absorbed at the network edge
- WebP image optimisation built in, at no extra charge
- Free SSL on every plan, reissued before the old one lapses
Frequently Asked
The questions that come up most
How much traffic does a domain move cost?
Done properly, with page-level 301s, a change-of-address submission and refreshed links, expect a dip of a few weeks and then most of the traffic returning. Done as one blanket homepage redirect, expect to rebuild deep rankings from nothing.
How long should the old name keep redirecting?
Permanently. Treat it as infrastructure. External links, bookmarks and citations decay very slowly, and each one keeps sending visitors for exactly as long as the redirect answers. Renewing the old name belongs in the standing budget.
Is there a safe place to try changes?
Yes — plans with staging let you copy the live site, work on the copy, then publish it once it behaves. That turns 'hope the update works' into 'know it works' before a single customer meets it.
Which control panel do accounts use?
cPanel, the panel the industry standardised on long ago. Every tutorial you find online will match what is on your screen, your backups restore onto any other cPanel host, and the skills stay useful for life. Plesk and DirectAdmin are available on particular plans if you prefer either.
Keep reading
How to Submit a Sitemap to Google
Give search engines a complete chart of everything you want crawled — beginner level, about 15 minutes.
How to Clean Up the WordPress Database
Flush out years of accumulated clutter and leave a database that responds faster — intermediate level, about 20 minutes.
Best Domain and Hosting Together
The same call put as a buyer's guide: what to verify, what to ignore, and the plan we would sign.
VPS Hosting
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Domain Names
Find, register and transfer names — year one free with annual hosting.
Changing hosts? Run through our checklist first.
A plain order of work for a move nobody visiting will notice: which files go over first, how to carry the mail across without losing a message, when exactly to repoint DNS, and the two mistakes behind nearly every outage we are asked to rescue.
The name is waiting.
NVMe hosting with SSL and the migration included, people answering at any hour, and a price that stays where it was.
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