The dry reforming of methane is a potential solution to mitigate the global warming effect. In this study, the effects of various preparation methods including the impregnation, coprecipitation, and combined coprecipitation-impregnation on physical characteristics and DRM catalytic performance of Ni-CeO2-Al2O3 were investigated. The synthetic procedure was discovered to have a crucial role in the basicity and reducibility, as well as nickel dispersion of catalyst. With affordable basicity and high reducibility, the combination of coprecipitation-impregnation exhibited the best performance with CH4 and CO2 steady-state conversions of 72% and 82%, respectively. Moreover, the deactivation of catalysts was also studied. The formation of low graphitic type showed less harmful to catalyst.