How to Redirect a Domain to Another Domain: Domain Name Forwarding Explained

Read this article to learn all about how to redirect one domain to another. 

If you want to find out how to redirect a domain to another domain, congrats! You’ve been pointed to the right place.

Your website is a massive deal for your brand. It’s your big sign, shopfront, shelves, counter and everything else, all in one. So, you’ve got to make sure it’s as good as can be. And top of the list of things to do is making sure it’s well organised and user-friendly. We’re not talking rocket science here. This means making sure your site visitors land exactly where they need to every time. And  domain name forwarding can sometimes be the best way of making it happen.

So, let’s dive into how to redirect a website to another domain and why you might want to do it in the first place.

Can I Redirect a Domain to Another Domain? Is It Doable?

You absolutely can. In fact, setting up a domain redirect is a piece of cake really. No need for a diploma in technology. If you can use a computer and know how to work a drop-down list (which we reckon you do), you can set up a domain name redirect in no time.

Why Do I Need to Redirect My Website Anyway?

When you first set up your site, it’s probably going to have a basic structure. But, over time you’ll be adding more and more pages, and there may come a point where you need to do a bit of a tidy-up or a total overhaul for your brand.

Let’s say your business is successful and has been branching out into new areas. If you started out with a very specific domain name, like www.traditionalfedoras.com, but then launched a new line in other kinds of hats, you might want to go down the multiple domains route and register the domain www.traditionalhats.com, too.

And that’s where a potential problem comes up. Partly because you already have a loyal army of headwear aficionados who’ve bookmarked your original domain. But even more importantly, your site will have built up an SEO profile along with a certain amount of domain authority recognised by Google and other search engines.

If you build a totally new site to go with your new domain, you’re starting from square one again. Basically, you’re throwing all the hard-earned credit your first domain has earned out of the window.

But, all is not lost, folks. There’s a simple answer. All you need to do is set up a domain redirect so anyone visiting traditionalfedoras.com is taken to traditionalhats.com instead.

You could always choose to use redirects as a form of housekeeping. Say some pages aren’t performing well. You might be better off combining them with others and using redirects to make sure users land on the strong pages.

OK, So What is a URL Redirect or URL Forwarding? How Do They Work?

URL redirects and URL forwarding are just other names for making a web page available at more than one web address.

One thing people do when registering domain names is to register the same domain with a few domain name extensions. The main reason is to make sure you’ve got lots of bases covered. So, you could register both the .com and .net variations of a domain and then redirect all the .net traffic to your main .com page. Pretty neat.

If a user types traditionalhats.net into a browser, what happens then is that the browser arrives at that URL and reads code that’s been left there, telling it to take the user to traditionalhats.com instead.

Three Different Types of Redirects: Here’s a List

Redirects fall into three main categories:

• 301 redirects. These are by far the most common type. They put in place a permanent change and signal to search engines to transfer all the associated SEO data and domain authority from the first domain to the target one. So, if you wanted to take advantage of domain hacks and move your whole site over to a .io or .ai address, you’d be able to do that without losing out SEO-wise.
• 302 redirects. This is a temporary measure that’s a bit like saying, ‘Nothing to see here, move along please’ to search engines, which will do just that. You’ll probably only use these if you’re tinkering with a few pages on your site for testing or maintenance purposes but don’t want to make a permanent change to your URL setup.
• Meta refresh. This is the kind of redirect that tells you as a user to ‘Click here if you’re not redirected within five seconds.’ This tells the browser to go to a new page without updating the server. It can be annoying for users, though, so most of the time you’re better off sticking with a simple 301 redirect.

How to Redirect a Domain in Four Easy Steps: Let’s Get To It

This is what you’re here for, so let’s dig into how to redirect a domain to another site.

Redirecting a new domain or subdomain

You can set up a redirect using the cPanel redirection tool. Log in to your account, go to the ‘Hosting’ option, and click on ‘My hosting.’ Log into your cPanel. Then, go to the ‘Domains’ section and click on the ‘Redirects’ tool. Type in your info, and you’re good to go.

Same deal for subdomains. These are pages with URLs like blog.traditionalhats.com with ‘blog’ or ‘shop’ etc., where ‘www’ usually is. There are lots of benefits of subdomains, but could put your blog pages under your main domain instead.

To do this, go to cPanel, click on ‘Subdomains’ under ‘Domains,’ and choose the one you want. Then just redirect the blog subdomain to www.traditionalhats.com/blog following the same steps as before.

Changing an existing domain or subdomain to redirect

It’s the same process here as how to forward a domain name to another site. You can follow the steps above to redirect existing domains and subdomains.

Creating a redirect to a subdirectory

Let’s say you want to create a redirect to a subdirectory for SEO reasons, maybe to concentrate keywords in a single domain. A subdirectory is like a folder within a folder (in this case, a page that sits under another page, like the blog URL www.traditionalhats.com/blog we talked about above). 

You can also use cPanel to do this.

How to turn off a redirect

You can get rid of a redirect by deleting it from your cPanel account. You can’t modify one this way, though, so if you want to edit your redirect, you’ll need to delete it and set up a new one.

Can I Redirect a Domain to Another Domain Without Hosting?

Yes, redirecting domains without hosting is also a sure thing. To redirect a domain to another one, in this case, just go to the ‘Domains’ section of your panel and pick your domain.

Then, scroll down and fill in these details:

Protocol: HTTP or HTTPS. It’s better to go for HTTPS. It’s the standard now because it’s both more secure and quicker.

Destination URL: The URL you want the redirection to point to.

Redirection type: Usually either 301 or 302.

Then, click ‘Create’. And voilà, you should see the redirection domain notice on your screen to confirm it’s been set up.

Domain Redirection: Get Real Support from Real People at OnlyDomains

We have to say it. At OnlyDomains, we have years of experience helping our clients get to grips with the technicalities of website management, like setting up domain forwarding. We know just how important maintaining a sleek and effective online presence is for your business. 

With our products, you get access to our extensive knowledge base and comprehensive support from our expert team. Got questions? Then reach out today to find out more.

FAQs About How to Redirect a Domain to Another Domain

Does redirecting work for the www and non-www versions of a site?

Yes. You can redirect any domain or subdomain to another URL in a few easy steps.

Does the redirect change MX records?

Nope, there’s no need to worry about that. All the redirect does is change where the page is hosted. Your mail records won’t be affected.

Does redirecting work with HTTPS (SSL certificate)?

Yes, although you need to tread a little carefully here. If you want to redirect from an HTTP domain to an HTTPS one, you can do this without the old domain needing an SSL certificate.

But, if you want to set up a redirect from a site that already has an SSL certificate, you’ll need to make sure that you a) continue to renew that certificate so the redirect keeps working and b) that the target domain has a correctly configured SSL certificate before you set up the redirect.

How long until the redirect is working?

For users, it’ll work right away as soon as you set it up. Search engine crawlers can take a bit longer to figure out what’s happened (don’t we all these days?!), so there can be a bit of a lag with indexing.

Can I redirect a deleted page?

Yes, you can set up a 301 redirect to a page with similar or related content so your site visitors don’t have to deal with 404 errors.