How to Change Domain Name In 2025

Your website’s domain name is its virtual identity. It conveys crucial information about your products and services while helping potential clients find your content and interact with your business. But various factors like new marketing strategies, shifts in operations, SEO tactics, or branding goals may motivate you to change your website’s domain name. Irrespective of the reason, a change in domain name can significantly impact your website’s traffic and visibility.

Can You Change a Domain Name?

While it is possible to change your website’s domain name, it is not as simple as modifying your social media profiles. Companies often opt for this change when trying to rebrand themselves or change how audiences see them. But if you are still looking to make this transition, you should understand that it’s a long, complex process involving various steps. These include creating a new domain address and redirecting the traffic from the original domain address to the new one.

What to Consider Before Changing Your Domain Name?

Since a change in your website’s domain name can significantly impact your brand identity, you should consider various factors before opting for this transition. The website’s technical requirements, web hosting platform and plan, SEO optimization, business continuity, and communication are all crucial factors to be considered to avoid disruptions to operations and protect your platform’s online visibility.

How to Change the Domain Name of an Existing Website?

1) Choose a New Name

When changing your web address, make sure you pick a short and memorable domain name rather than a complicated one. Doing this helps attract more customers and helps your business stand out among competitors. It also helps if your new domain name reflects your business’s products and services. But, before selecting a new domain name, confirm whether it is already registered by another entity to avoid getting into legal problems.

2) Register the New Domain Name

After selecting a unique domain name, you should register it with the help of an ICANN-accredited domain registrar. The registration process also includes updating the Domain Name System (DNS) records to make sure that the new domain name is associated with the correct hosting platform and servers. Developers often face complications when their web hosting plan does not support a domain change. Confirm there are no such issues before going ahead with the registration process.

Read more about: Best Domain Registrars

3) Update Internal Links

Since changes to the domain name can impact your website’s SEO and traffic, you must take the necessary steps to redirect visitors to the new website. To avoid impacts to your website’s operations, make sure to set up redirects from your old links to your new site and update all internal links accordingly. To help search engines recognize your new domain name, make use of tools that notify them of the change. Also, remember to update your website address everywhere it appears, including articles, ecommerce listings, email newsletters, and payment gateways.

3) Test the New Domain Name

The last step before going live with your new domain name is checking all the site links and ensuring they are performing well. If you find any broken links, fix them. In case of any technical issues, contact your hosting provider’s support team to solve the problems before the site goes live.

What Are the Risks of Changing Your Domain Name?

1) Financial Losses

Changing your domain name can involve additional expenses, so you must be prepared to adjust your budget accordingly. While a simple name change won’t cost much, opting for a premium domain may burn a hole in your pocket. You’ll need to consider costs like domain registration, new marketing material, website rebranding, SEO and link-building, and legal and trademark checks.

2) Decline in Traffic

One of the biggest risks of changing domain names is losing traffic to the site. A domain name change prompts search engines to go through the new site and re-index it, leading to a change in your website’s rankings. In addition, search traffic will be down for an uncertain amount of time as users may take time to adjust to the new address. This can also affect your website’s domain age, search ranking, and reliability. But careful planning and the right strategies can help cushion this impact and help you regain your normal traffic.

Read more about: How does web hosting affect SEO

3) Technical Glitches

While changing the domain name, your website may experience downtime due to the time-consuming re-scanning and re-indexing processes. Other factors like DNS propagation, caching issues, and CMS updates can also lead to downtime. But such issues may discourage your existing and potential clients from accessing the website. So, you must solve these technical glitches to ensure a smooth domain name transition.

FAQs

1) Can you change the domain name of a website?

Yes and no. Businesses often change the domain name of their sites. But, instead of renaming their existing domain, they create a new web address and link it to the older website to avoid losing their existing traffic.

2) Is it a good idea to change a domain name?

Changing a website’s domain name is a complicated process that has its benefits and risks. It makes sense to change your website’s domain name if the current one doesn’t reflect your business’s professional goals or brand identity.

3) How long is the process to change a domain name?

Depending on the amount of data available on the existing website, changing a domain name can take anywhere between a few hours and several days to complete. If your existing website has a lot of data that needs to be migrated, it can take longer than a simple name change.

4) How much will it cost to change a domain name?

The cost of a domain change depends on the kind of new domain you purchase. This can be anywhere between $10 and $1000.

5) Is it possible to maintain your current URL paths while changing the domain?

Yes, with the help of 301 redirects, it is possible to maintain the current URL paths or structures even with a change in domain name. By diverting traffic from the old domain to the new one, 301 redirects also help minimize the impact on the website’s traffic and search engine results, and even avoid any 404 errors.

6) Can you revert to your previous domain name if you change your mind later?

Yes, it is possible to revert to the old domain address. But it is a complicated process that leads to further downtime and a waste of rebranding efforts. Here, you must redirect all the internal and external links to the website you used previously.

7) How to change my domain name on WordPress?

WordPress domain name changes can be done by heading to the settings on the CMS platform.