Minimize SEO Setbacks When Changing Your Domain (Lofty AOS)

Introduction

Changing your website's domain — even from olddomain.com to newdomain.com — is one of the highest-risk SEO events a website can go through. Without proper steps, you can lose months or years of accumulated search ranking.

Follow these six steps to protect your SEO equity during a domain change.

Before You Start

Configure your new domain in Lofty first. Before notifying Google, make sure your new domain is connected to your Lofty website and working correctly. See [Domain Configuration Guide] for instructions.

Step 1: Verify Ownership of the New Domain in Google Search Console

1. Go to Google Search Console and sign in.
2. Click Add Property in the top-left.
3. Enter your new domain URL (including https://).
4. Complete the verification steps Google provides.

You must complete this before the Change of Address request in Step 2.

Step 2: Submit a Change of Address Request

Google's Change of Address tool formally notifies Google that your site has permanently moved to a new domain.

1. In Google Search Console, select your old domain's property.
2. Go to Settings in the left sidebar.
3. Under Property Settings, click Change of Address.
4. Select your verified new domain from the list.
5. Follow Google's wizard to confirm the move is permanent and that redirects are in place.

This tells Google to transfer the SEO authority from your old domain to your new one.

Step 3: Implement 301 Redirects on Your Old Domain

301 redirects tell search engines that a page has permanently moved. Without them, traffic and SEO value going to your old URLs disappears instead of transferring to the new domain.

Set up 301 redirects from every page on your old domain to the corresponding page on your new domain:

• olddomain.com/about → newdomain.com/about
• olddomain.com/listings → newdomain.com/listings
• And so on for every page

If your old domain was also a Lofty site, contact Lofty Support at support@lofty.com to arrange redirects — they cannot be self-configured for Lofty-hosted sites.

Step 4: Submit Updated Sitemaps

1. In Google Search Console, navigate to your new domain's property.
2. Go to Sitemaps.
3. Submit your sitemap with the new domain's URLs.

Lofty automatically generates a sitemap for your site. The sitemap URL is typically yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml — confirm this and submit it to GSC.

Step 5: Monitor the Transition

After completing the steps above, actively monitor your new domain's performance for 3–6 months:

• Coverage report — Watch for redirect errors or indexing issues on the new domain.
• Performance report — Track how search traffic is trending. Some temporary ranking drops are normal; they should recover over weeks to months.
• Crawl errors — Check that Google can access your new pages without issues.

Step 6: Update External Links

For each backlink pointing to your old domain, the redirect handles the SEO value transfer — but updating the link directly is more effective long-term.

• Reach out to high-value sites that link to you and ask them to update their links to the new domain.
• Update your own profiles: Google My Business, Zillow, Realtor.com, social media bios, email signatures, and marketing materials.
• Update Google Analytics to track traffic under the new domain.

Tips

• Do this during a slow period. Avoid domain changes during peak buying/selling seasons — the temporary traffic disruption is less impactful during off-peak months.
• Give it time. Google can take 6–12 months to fully recognize a domain change. Don't panic if rankings fluctuate in the first few weeks.
• Don't let your old domain expire. Keep your old domain registered and redirecting for at least 2 years to capture any lingering traffic and backlink value.

Questions?

If you have any questions regarding this topic or any others, please reach out to our Support Team via email at support@lofty.com, by phone at 1 (855) 981-7557, or by chat with us through your Lofty CRM.