If you can call yourself a webmaster or a web developer you must be knowing the usage and importance of domain redirection. A redirect is when you type one domain address in the browser and it redirects to another website. It has both SEO and branding uses.

1. SEO uses: Backlinks play a vital role in the Search Engine Optimisation business. Backlinks are simply links to a domain. More the number of quality backlinks better will be the rank of the web page in the Google search positions. When a domain is redirected, in effect, all the backlinks to that domain also gets redirected to the new domain giving a noticeable change in the google SERP. There are also other uses like changing the domain name to a higher quality domain or from a low-level domain (.tk) to a top level domain (.com).
2. Branding uses: Having a branded or short domain name gives a better image to a company. People buy new domains paying a lot of money for this purpose. You can also see brands such as amazon acquiring and redirecting domain names that are similar to their domain names to not lose any users.

301/302 redirect a Godaddy domain

Godaddy is a well-established company in the domain and hosting business and has been in the field for many years. Their campaign of selling a new.COM domain for 1.5 USD per year has brought a lot of customers for them. In this part of the article, we will see how a GoDaddy domain is redirected.

1. Before you can do anything, open godaddy.com and login with your login credentials.
2. Once your account dashboard loads up, you can see all your products such as domains, hosting, email accounts etc. Now you need to press the plus icon near the “DOMAINS” tab to expand it.
3. In the list that comes up, find the domain that you want to redirect and click on the button that reads Manage DNS.
4. In the Domain manager page that loads up, you can set the nameservers, add records and manage forwardings.
5. Click on the forwarding tab.
6. You can either redirect the whole domain or just a subdomain.
7. On the first box, choose either http:// or https:// depending on whether the new domain uses SSL or not.
8. Carefully enter the new domain name in the second box.
9. There are two options, 301 or 302. 301 is permanent where as 302 is temporary. Figure out which one you need and choose the one you need.
10. Next step will be to choose if you want a redirect with masking or just a redirect. A masked redirection has SEO benefits. If you choose this, specify the title, meta description, and the meta keywords.
11. Tick the next check box to update your nameservers as well as DNS settings for the redirection to take effect.
12. Click on SAVE.

You will see the change happening once the DNS migration finishes. In my experience with Godaddy, this happens almost instantly.

301 redirect a Bigrock domain

Indian company Bigrock is the second domain provider that we shall cover in our tutorial. Their process is a bit more complex and takes some more time than Godaddy. Follow these steps:

1. Open bigrock.in and sign in with your Username and password credentials.
2. From the list of domains in your account, choose the domain that you wish to forward.
3. Go to the bottom of the page and click on Manage DNS.
4. A new window will pop up now.
5. Open the A records and delete every single one of the records in there.
6. Now add these 3 records. These are required for the redirection to take place.
   
   Name:                  IP Address :  173.193.106.14
   Name: www         IP Address :  173.193.106.14
   Name: *               IP Address :  173.193.106.14
7. Now go back to the older page and click on Domain Forwarding settings.
8. The page for configuring the domain forwarding facility will now open in a new window.
9. Choose whether the new site runs on https:// or Http://.
10. Also, enter the new domain’s URL in the adjacent text box.
11. Choose whether URL masking and subdomain forwarding are needed. URL masking has an SEO advantage and redirecting subdomains are a useful feature.
12. The next option is the Path forwarding facility. This will make all the individual URLs of that website to redirect correctly to the new domain. Turn this ON if the domain of a website is being changed.
13. Click on the save button to end the process.

A big rock redirection is not instant and will take some time before it happens.

Note- To test any changes on your website in real time, make sure you disable the cache and use VPN abroad.

Conclusion

This is how you Setup Redirection of domains managed by Godaddy or Bigrock. Do comment below if you face any issues or errors.