Changing Domain Name Redirects

Resolved Christopher Hanna
1 year, 9 months ago

Rank Math free

I currently have another website running Rankmath with various redirections in place through the plugin. I’m changing that site’s domain name, and plan to use a plugin to make things easier (probably Duplicator for WP). I plan to use redirect rules in my site’s htaccess to redirect everything from my old site to my new site, and the duplicator plugin should take care of the url names on the new site for me. I’m also going to inform Google about the move with Change of Address tool etc, that’s not the concern right now.

I want to know how my existing Rankmath redirects will be affected. So for example, on the old site, I have redirects like:

olddomain.com/page1/ -> olddomain.com/page-1/ (/page1/ has been deleted so is permanently redirected to /page-1/ with a 301)

and on the new domain within the Rankmath plugin, as a result of the duplicator plugin transferring everything on the site but changing the url string to match the new domain, that should update to (on the new site only):

newdomain.com/page-1/ -> olddomain.com/page-1/

Will it cause issues if there are essentially multiple redirects to the same thing?

e.g. if someone typed in/accessed olddomain.com/page1/ (deleted) will they end up on olddomain.com/page-1/ or newdomain.com/page1/ or newdomain.com/page-1/ or will Google just end up confused?

It’s really more likely that Google will be finding any of these non-current urls than users in search etc, as most were changed/deleted due to low traffic or poor quality. So the main concern is Google finding lots of pages redirecting to multiple places and that being a potential issue.

Hopefully you can help shed some light on this!

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

RankBot
1 year, 9 months ago

Hello,

I apologize for the inconvenience you’re facing with your website’s domain name change and the potential impact on your existing Rank Math redirects.

When changing your domain name and using a plugin like Duplicator for WordPress, the URL strings on the new site should be updated to match the new domain, as you mentioned. However, it’s important to note that if you have multiple redirects to the same destination, it can potentially cause issues.

In your case, if someone accesses olddomain.com/page1/ (deleted), they should end up on olddomain.com/page-1/ due to the 301 redirect in place. However, if there are multiple redirects to different destinations, it can lead to confusion for both users and search engines like Google.

To avoid potential issues with multiple redirects, it’s essential to ensure that the redirects are set up correctly and that there are no conflicting redirection rules. Additionally, you may want to consider using canonical tags to indicate the preferred version of a page to search engines.

If you have any further questions or need assistance with setting up or managing your redirects during the domain name change, please feel free to reach out to our support team directly from here: Rank Math Support.

We’re here to help!

Sources:
How to Fix ‘Duplicate Without User-Selected Canonical’ Status in Google Search Console » Rank Math
How to Fix “Duplicate, Google Chose Different Canonical than User” » Rank Math
Alternate Page with Proper Canonical Tag Status in Google Search Console » Rank Math
How to Fix the Submitted URL Seems to Be a “Soft 404” Error » Rank Math
Random URLs Redirecting Even When No Redirect Was Created » Rank Math

Reinelle
1 year, 9 months ago

Hello,

Thank you for your patience.

In that process, you would need to update the destination URLs only (new site).

This example will happen if you don’t change the destination URL:

newdomain.com/page-1/ -> olddomain.com/page1/

Since the source URLs are automatically set to the domain, you would update the domains in the destination URLs in the redirects you have created in Rank Math (new site).

In your old site, since you’re going to set the redirect of your whole site via htaccess, then you won’t need Rank Math redirects.

Hope that helps.

Christopher Hanna
1 year, 9 months ago

Rank Math free

Thank you for the reply! I think I’m following you.

So, once I move the website over to the NEW domain, I would delete all the redirects within Rankmath on the OLD domain, correct?

As the htaccess rule would redirect every url with olddomain.com in it to newdomain.com. So if olddomain.com/incorrect-page/ originally (within Rankmath) redirected to olddomain.com/correct-page/, it would now just redirect to newdomain.com/incorrect-page/ (via the htaccess rule, with no Rankmath use on the OLD domain).

And then on the new domain, those redirects will all have transferred within Rankmath, with updated source and destination urls, correct? So Rankmath would now redirect newdomain.com/incorrect-page/ to newdomain.com/correct-page/, is that right?

Meaning, if a user or Google found olddomain.com/incorrect-page/, they would be redirected via the htaccess rule first to newdomain.com/incorrect-page/ and then via Rankmath (on the NEW domain) to newdomain.com/correct-page/. Does that sound right?

Obviously this leads to 2 redirects which isn’t great, but it’s for a limited number of pages that receive a limited number of views. They are still crawled by Google as far as I can tell in Search Console, but I think this is the only solution for now.

Hopefully that all makes sense, but please let me know if I’ve misunderstood anything.

As an unrelated question, I want to set some pages to return a 404 (rather than a 410) status code. Is this possible with the Pro version of the plugin? I only see 410 and 451 in the Maintenance Code section of the free plugin. Thanks!

Ike
1 year, 9 months ago

Hello,

You are right. Once you move the website over to the new domain, you can delete all the redirects within Rank Math on the old domain. The htaccess rule will take care of redirecting every URL with olddomain.com in it to newdomain.com.

On the new domain, the redirects will have transferred within Rank Math, with updated source URLs. So, after updating the destination URLs, Rank Math would now redirect newdomain.com/incorrect-page/ to newdomain.com/correct-page/.

If a user or Google found olddomain.com/incorrect-page/, they would be redirected via the htaccess rule first to newdomain.com/incorrect-page/ and then via Rank Math (on the new domain) to newdomain.com/correct-page/. This is correct.

While it’s true that this leads to 2 redirects which isn’t ideal, it’s a temporary solution for a limited number of pages that receive a limited number of views. As long as these pages are still being crawled by Google, as you’ve observed in Search Console, this should work for now.

2.

The Rank Math Pro plugin does not have a specific feature to set pages to return a 404 status code.
Please note that a 404 status code is returned by the server when a requested page is not found. This can happen when a page has been moved, deleted, or the URL has been mistyped.

If you want to manually set a page to return a 404 status code, you would typically need to delete or move the page so the server cannot find it. However, please be aware that excessive 404 errors can negatively impact the user experience and potentially your site’s SEO.

We hope that helps.

Thanks.

Christopher Hanna
1 year, 9 months ago

Rank Math free

Thank you for your reply, that really helps me out!

Princess
1 year, 9 months ago

Hello,

We are super happy that this resolved your issue. If you have any other questions in the future, know that we are here to help you.

If you don’t mind me asking, could you please leave us a review (if you haven’t already) on https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/seo-by-rank-math/reviews/#new-post about your overall experience with Rank Math? We appreciate your time and patience.

If you do have another question in the future, please feel free to create a new forum topic, and it will be our pleasure to assist you again.

Thank you.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

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