Should I be redirecting a .gov.au domain to a .com/.com.au Marketing URL?
-
Hi everyone,
First time post - what a great community! On a trial at the moment but will definitely be signing up to PRO.
The situation
I'm helping to promote an event in Australia (lets call it "myevent"). The event also goes by a nickname "myev" (which isn't searched as much as "myevent").
The event for the most part is promoted offline as www.myevent.com. As it currently stands (and appears to have been the case for a number of years), www.myevent.com and www.myevent.com.au 302 redirect to www.mylocation.gov.au/myev
The event is pretty much number 1 for keywords around "my event" and "myev", despite little attention being paid to on page optimisation and issues around duplicate content which I intend to fix. The domain being indexed by Google is www.mylocation.gov.au/myev .
Open site explorer stats
Open Site explorer shows www.mylocation.gov.au/myev as having a strong domain authority, and hundreds of backlinks. www.myevent.com and www.myevent.com.au have domain authorities in the 20s and about 30-40 backlinks each.
The conundrum
I've had a chat with the IT guys running the site(s) and they mentioned they'll be switching the way the redirects work, so everything goes to www.myevent.com NOT the .gov.au URL. I've done a bit of reading on the forums and understand that 301s should be used in order to pass the juice/authority from the existing domain (in this case www.location.gov.au/mye). I understand not all of this will be passed.
What I'm not sure about is which URL should be the final preferred destination. I may not have a choice - www.myevent.com has been the preferred URL for a long time - but want to know if this will affect the performance in search results if the .com.au isn't used as the final destination (even though we would be redirecting from it)?
Any suggestions / ideas / help would be most appreciated. I hope this all makes sense - I'm relatively new to the whole SEO world!
Best wishes and many thanks.
-
Thank you my friend much appreciated.
Best wishes.
-
Herg,
That determination in my opinion depends on which domain has the most potential to appear to the majority of your target demographic hence I would lean towards the .au . I did a quick peek at Google.com(US) and entered "Sydney events" and "Sydney opera calendar" to check out a hunch and this verified that .au domains were indeed performing well when the local intent is present even on this end of the pond .
I would use the .au to give you a leg up in your effort to reach your primary targets.
Best of Luck Mate
-
Thank you very much for the quick answer Mik. Much appreciated.
The event is specific to .au but does have international appeal - however the vast majority of searches do occur in Australia during the event period.
Would you still suggest having .com.au as the final destination (i.e. 301 the .com to the .au?)
Many thanks and best wishes.
-
I've read your question a couple of times and I think I can provide some insight . A 301 from the www.location.gov.au/mye should pass around 90-98% juice so shouldn't be a huge hump to overcome, now as the preferred destination it boils down to the answer to a couple of questions to make it brief:
1. Which has more content relative to the event or intent ( a very rough metric should be site:www.myevent.com "myev" and site:www.myevent.com.au "myev" and see what is indexed better) ? If we are to consider the sites even have enough non duplicate content.
2. Is the event specific to .au ? Are you looking to promote internationally? If .au specific then go with the .au - you can 301 the .com to the .au anyways
Hope I understood the question and wishing this helped you out mate.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Tool to Generate All the URLs on a Domain
Hi all, I've been using xml-sitemaps.com for a while to generate a list of all the URLs that exist on a domain. However, this tool only works for websites with under 500 URLs on a domain. The paid tool doesn't offer what we are looking for either. I'm hoping someone can help with a recommendation. We're looking for a tool that can: Crawl, and list, all the indexed URLs on a domain, including .pdf and .doc files (ideally in a .xls or .txt file) Crawl multiple domains with unlimited URLs (we have 5 websites with 500+ URLs on them) Seems pretty simple, but we haven't been able to find something that isn't tailored toward management of a single domain or that can crawl a huge volume of content.
Technical SEO | | timfrick0 -
Redirect to new domain.... (which is penalised)
Hey - how's things? I have a client who wants to redirect his main domain to a new one.... there are a couple of problems I see and thought I'd ask on moz. 1 - The new domain has been incorrectly parked on the old domain with no redirection in place... when you do "site:domain.com" in Google, there are no serps for the new domain (the old domain still ranks well), it doesn't seem to rank anywhere and doesn't return any results in OSE. Is it wise to redirect to this domain or will rankings drop on both? 2 - The new domain uses .mobi as its suffix and will be replacing a .com - but is much more related to the business keyword wise. Is using mobi a problem. Overall the SEO on the site is abysmal and I will be reworking everything - so there will be lots of changes going on at the same time. I'm just wondering if it is worth redirecting the new domain at all, or trying to get brand new domain and use that.... or just to stick with the original aged domain... I think that is my only concerns at the moment
Technical SEO | | agua0 -
Redirecting Domain will cause SEO?
I am redirecting my domain, based on Geo Location. For example : if someone browse from india www.example.com they will redirect to www.example.in Does redirecting domain on Geo based will cause SEO or Any kind of duplicate content issue, as i am using same content on both TLDs.
Technical SEO | | anishtapan0 -
I cannot find a way to implement to the 2 Link method as shown in this post: http://searchengineland.com/the-definitive-guide-to-google-authorship-markup-123218
Did Google stop offering the 2 link method of verification for Authorship? See this post below: http://searchengineland.com/the-definitive-guide-to-google-authorship-markup-123218 And see this: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/using-passive-link-building-to-build-links-with-no-budget In both articles the authors talk about how to set up Authorship snippets for posts on blogs where they have no bio page and no email verification just by linking directly from the content to their Google+ profile and then by linking the from the the Google+ profile page (in the Contributor to section) to the blog home page. But this does not work no matter how many ways I trie it. Did Google stop offering this method?
Technical SEO | | jeff.interactive0 -
Domain Perfect Match (ChocolateChocolate.com)
Hi Guys, I'm Lucas, from Brazil and this is my first question at this forum, i expend alot of time reading the forum content, its very good and very helpfully, thanks everyone! 🙂 . i'm trying to rank to a specific word, that word, lets say as "Chocolate", ok? If i buy the domain chocolatechocolate.com is can be considered a Perfect Match domain? Anyone have tried this? Thank's for your time..
Technical SEO | | lucassc0 -
What is best practice for redirecting "secondary" domain names?
For sites with multiple top-level domains that have been secured for a business or organization, I'm curious as to what is considered best practice for setting up 301 redirects for secondary domains. Is it best to do the 301 redirects at the registrar level, or the hosting level? So that .net, .biz, or other secondary domains funnel visitors to the correct primary/main domain name. I'm looking for the "best practice" answer and want to avoid duplicate content problems, or penalties from the search engines. I'm not trying to game the system with dozens of domain names, simply the handful of domains that are important to the client. I've seen some registrars recommend hosting secondary domains, and doing redirects from the hosting level (and they use meta refresh for "domain forwarding," which I want to avoid). It seems rather wasteful to set up hosting for a secondary domain and then 301 each URL.
Technical SEO | | Scott-Thomas0 -
Considering redirecting my site from .com/us to just .com. What could the possible SERP consequences?
Today we use country-specific .tlds but have the US site on .com/us; .com is now a 'flag-site.' Ikea uses that structure too (.com/.com/us). Looking potential risk to redirecting current US site to .com.
Technical SEO | | KnutDSvendsen0 -
Follow up from http://www.seomoz.org/qa/discuss/52837/google-analytics
Ben, I have a follow up question from our previous discussion at http://www.seomoz.org/qa/discuss/52837/google-analytics To summarize, to implement what we need, we need to do three things: add GA code to the Darden page _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-12345-1']);_gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', '.darden.virginia.edu']);_gaq.push(['_setAllowHash', false]);_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); Change links on the Darden Page to look like http://www.darden.virginia.edu/web/MBA-for-Executives/ and [https://darden-admissions.symplicity.com/applicant](<a href=)">Apply Now and make into [https://darden-admissions.symplicity.com/applicant](<a href=)" > onclick="_gaq.push(['_link', 'https://darden-admissions.symplicity.com/applicant']); return false;">Apply Now Have symplicity add this code. _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-12345-1']);_gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', '.symplicity.com']);_gaq.push(['_setAllowHash', false]);_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); Due to our CMS system, it does not allow the user to add onClick to the link. So, we CANNOT add part 2) What will be the result if we have only 1) and 3) implemented? Will the data still be fed to GA account 'UA-12345-1'? If not, how can we get cross domain tracking if we cannot change the link code? Nick
Technical SEO | | Darden0