Should You Keep Your Old Website Domain Name?

You've got a great website, but maybe it's a little outdated, or you've moved on to something new. Rebranding in general is very common, we can't all be expected to stick with the first idea we have! Because of this, you may be thinking about letting your old domain name expire to save a few bucks.  But hold on!  There's a good chance keeping your old domain could be a smart move, especially if you're interested in SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Your website domain is your address online. People use it to find you, and search engines like Google use it the same way and for indexing your site.  Even if your website is no longer active, keeping the domain name is important for a whole slew of reasons:

1.  Protecting Your Brand

Imagine your website is like a brand name. You've put time and effort into building it, and people recognize it.  If you let the domain name expire, someone else could snatch it up. They could then use it for a website that's similar to yours, or even worse, something completely different that could damage your reputation. Keeping your domain name helps you stay in control of your brand and prevent anyone from using it in a way you don't want. Although it's going to cost you a little every year to hold onto it, this protects the domain from being hijacked.

2.  Redirecting Traffic after a Rebrand

Even if you're not using your old website, a potential visitor might still be trying to find it. Maybe they've saved the link in their bookmarks or received an old email with a link to your website.  If you choose to let the domain name expire, those people will get an error message if they type it into their address bar. The best practice is simply to keep the domain, but to point or redirect it to your new domain address.  This means people who type in your old address will be sent to your new website, ensuring they still find you.

Here are a few resources on how to redirect or forward your domain name using a 301 (permanent) redirect:

Forwarding your Squarespace domain
Redirecting a Wix domain
Forward your GoDaddy domain

3.  Boosting SEO

SEO is a fancy term for making your website appear higher in search engine results.  Search engines like Google use many factors to rank websites, and one of those factors is the history of the domain name.  If your old website has been around for a while and has some good content, keeping the domain name helps you retain that history.  This can give your new website a bit of a head start in the search engine rankings. 

In addition, your old site will have likely accumulated links over the time that it existed. These links from other sites, also known as backlinks, are a HUGE factor of ranking on search engines. Search platforms like Google use their own algorithms to determine how much authority your site has based on these backlinks. When we let our domain expire, we lose these links. If we keep the domain and point it to our new website, much of that domain authority is passed on to the new site - so we aren't starting at "0"! Click here to learn more about building backlinks.

Finally, any rankings that we have on our old website will be largely carried over to the new domain if we redirect the content. Why lose all the positive rankings you have just to save a few dollars?

4.  Avoiding the “Domain Name Grabbing” Trap

Domain names can be quite valuable, especially if they have a strong brand recognition or are related to a popular topic. There are companies out there that specialize in "domain grabbing" – they wait for popular domain names to expire and then quickly register them, hoping to resell for a profit.  If your domain name is valuable, you don't want to risk losing it to a domain grabber. It's an awful feeling to have a domain name grabbed like this, only to find out that you'll have to spend a minimum of several hundred dollars to get it back...

5.  Future Opportunities

You might not be using your old website now, but you never know what the future holds.  Maybe you'll want to revive it later, or maybe you'll have a new idea for a website or brand that uses the old domain name.  Keeping it gives you the flexibility to use it again in the future, without having to start from scratch.

So, should you keep your old website domain?  

The answer is almost always, YES.  It's a smart move to protect your brand, redirect your traffic for SEO strength, and avoid the risks of domain grabbing.  While there might be a small cost involved, keeping your domain name could pay off in the long run.  

But, every situation is different.  If you're sure you won't need the domain name again, or if it's associated with a website that you're completely done with, then letting it expire is probably fine - especially if the site never received any organic traffic or had a very weak backlink profile.  

At the end of the day, every case is different.