Disadvantages of Relaunching Your Company Without 301 Redirects

Doing a company relaunch could include something simple like changing your business name, business plan or your logo. But, if you are doing something far more involved like changing your domain name to another domain name, you might be wondering if this really is the smart thing to do. One of the nice things about changing a domain name is that you can still have all the same benefits, but with a different domain URL. It doesn’t matter if you have been in business and had your domain for awhile now (a few years) or for a few months. Chances are people know your website for the domain name you have had since starting the site. If you simply close the website down and do not do a redirect, you could potentially lose out on potential buyers and people interested in your business. With a redirect, this will not happen. People can type in your old URL and be directed automatically to your new website. Be sure to notify people on the new website that you have changed the url. But, if they forget the new website name they can visit the old one and it will redirect them in the future. It’s a good idea to keep your old domain name and the redirect for at least one year so that search engines and visitors can get acclimated. Chances are you have worked really hard on marketing your website and doing SEO. If you do not use a redirect 301 you lose all of that hard work and it gets flushed down the toilet. On the other hand, you can still benefit from all that work by using the 301 redirect. Search engine bots that visit your page are almost as beneficial as a person visiting your page. The biggest difference is that bots record any changes on your website and index those changes. When you use a 301 and a bot visits your page, the bot will record the fact that you are using a 301 and what your new website domain is!