When you finally purchase a domain, you’re essentially buying a property on the web.
The web = information super heighway of traffic, engagement, money, attention.
So if and when a website URL is ever changed, for any reason, there will be repercussions. Just like moving the location of a longstanding retail store, a URL change is sending traffic to a different IP address.
Customers AND algorithms need to re-learn where the site exists online. This leads to negative consequences for online business with strong SEO conversion value.
How does changing a domain negatively affect SEO?
For starters, all of the SEO value and rankings will be gone. Zilch. Zero Restarted. This is a tough pill to swallow since substantial SEO value takes 3-6 months to ever bear fruit, much less ROI. Yet these are the rules on the Internet – when you change the domain name the IP address changes and every algorithm thinks of that online property as totally new.
Branding will be affected. For many months, even years depending on how big the website is. Users associate a URL with a brand. If you change the URL, you’re essentially rebranding depending on the degree of rhetoric change. This will translate to some lost customers and bad SEO performance for a noteworthy period of time.