Transitioning your website’s URL will affect your search engine rankings no matter what. The search engines respond differently to domain name changes which can cause rankings to drop substantially or be excluded from a search engine’s index entirely. But, there are things website marketers can do to limit the impending damage. Having a comprehensive search engine marketing strategy in place well before the URL transition is the key. Make sure URLs that will no longer remain are properly redirected. Another strategy that you must adhere to in order to mitigate risk is researching external links to your website (including directory listings) and notifying external websites if URLs are going to change and provide them with new addresses if possible.
