Move established site from .co.uk to .org - good or bad idea?
-
I am currently considering moving our site from the current .co.uk domain to the .org version which we also own.
The site is established and indexed for 7 years, ranks well and has circa 10k traffic per month which is mainly UK & US traffic.
The reason for the change to the .org domain is to make the site more global facing and give us the opportunity to develop the site into multi language within directories (.org/es/ etc.) and then target those to the local search engines. For the kind of site it is (community based) it wouldn’t really work to split this into lots of separate country targeted domains.
So the choice is to either stick with the .co.uk and add the other foreign language specific content in directories within the .co.uk or move to the .org and do the same (there is also a potential third option of purchasing the .com which is currently unused but that could be pricey!)
We are also planning a big overhaul of the site with redesign, lots of added content and reorganisation of the site – but are thinking that it would be better to move the domain on a 1:1 basis first with the current design, content and URL structure in place and then do the other changes 2 or 3 months down the line.
I have read up on SEOmoz, google guidelines etc on moving a site to a new domain and understand the theoretical approach of moving the site and the steps to take (1to1 301 redirects, sitemaps on old and new etc) and I will retain ownership of the .co.uk so the redirects can remain in place indefinitely.
However having worked so hard to get the site to where it is in the search engines and traffic levels I am very worried about whether the domain change is a good move. I am more than happy to accept a temporary fluctuation in rankings & traffic for 1 – 4 weeks as reported may happen as long as I can be sure it will return after a temporary period and be as strong (or almost as strong) as the previous rankings / traffic.
Looking for peoples experiences to give me the confidence / reassurance to go ahead with this or any info on why I shouldn’t
Thanks in advance for your advice.
Adrian.
-
If you are going to make this site enormously popular then owning the .com will allow you stop the loss of type-in traffic to the .com domain.
For popular .org .gov .net and other domain extensions, lots of visitors instinctively type .com as the domain. I do it often myself when attempting to visit some .gov and .org sites. I am usually surprised at what I find there.
I know of a couple .com domains that get thousands of visitors per day because visitors don't type .gov as the extension.
-
Thanks both for your responses.
Although we enjoy good rankings and good traffic levels we are in one of the most competitive (SEO wise) sector (Gambling Affiliate) so we are no where near the dominant player for our key terms which I guess makes this sort of move even more risky.
EGOL – when you say you would go after the .com – do you mean for the purpose of blocking competition using it (ie: buy it to redirect to .co.uk) or would it make a difference to the argument for moving to a different domain if it was the .com instead of the .org?
So I guess the other question is if you guys think it is too risky to move the domain – do you think it is ok to build a multi language site on the .co.uk in directories or would it be better to try and buy all the country specific domains .es .de .fr etc.. (ideally wanted to keep it all under one domain as there will be shared forums and shared member backend and tracking all happening but will consider all options.)
-
I agree that there is more risk moving an older site than a newer site.
If you lost 10% of a little it would not be much... but if you lost 10% of a lot then that would be disappointing.
-
Hi Adrian,
Since your site is an established and indexed for 7 years property, I would not move it since
1- The links are actually pointing at your .co.uk domain and that won't change even with proper redirection.
2- People must probably knows this URL in some proportion
3- Your domain has build a trust from search engines that I would not play with to start from a new one.
Maybe someone would think different, but I prefer building a new site with new content or new content to my site then to risk it's futur.
-
If you redirect you will probably lose a small amount of linkjuice and possibly some anchor text value.
Do you have your closest competitors soundly beaten?
If you are clearly the dominant site in your niche then your risk of loss is lower but still possible.
(I would go after that .com.... I would be willing to pay quite a bit for it)
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
-
Any idea why pages are not being indexed?
Hi Everyone, One section on our website is not being indexed. The product pages are, but not some of the subcategories. These are very old pages, so thought it was strange. Here is an example one one: https://www.moregems.com/loose-cut-gemstones/prasiolite-loose-gemstones.html If you take a chunk of text, it is not found in Google. No issues in Bing/Yahoo, only Google. You think it takes a submission to Search Console? Jeff
Technical SEO | | vetofunk1 -
Linking out to authoritive sites from my ecommerce site
Good afternoon SEOmoz community. I was looking for a specific answer or advice or opinion about linking out to other sites. My Site www.tacticalbootstore.com has been undergoing a complete content rewrite. In the process we have been told and read where it can be good to link out to other authoritive sites. One of the pages we have rewritten is here. http://www.tacticalbootstore.com/belleville-boots-sizing-chart-a-97.html We have not added the graphics yet as they are being built now. This is just an informational page about sizing of a particular manufacturers boots. Once you get to the bottom of the text we have added a link to the actual manufacturers page. Is this helpful for us in the SERPS or not? Thank you for your time. Chris
Technical SEO | | scamper0 -
Best way to retain banklink values when moving site?
Hi all, I want to get some opinions on what the best practice is when transferring backlink values from an old site to a new one. On the old site, I currently have a product page and this particular product has multiple models all listed on the one singe page. However on the new site, every model of this particular product has its own page. These product model pages would have relatively similar content apart from several key details which differentiates the models. Firstly would you guys recommend this splitting of models of the same product to different pages? If so, my initial thought process is to 301 redirect the old product page to the new model page that is most popular, and adding rel canonical tags to the other model pages. Would you consider this best practice? Or are there better ways I can be doing this to retain backlink values without also getting penalised due to possible content duplication? Thanks! Jac - sent from my manager's account.
Technical SEO | | RuchirP0 -
We're no longer turning up in Google SERP for our brand search when we used to be #1 after our site update. Any ideas why?
We recently updated our website and during the push, someone mistakenly 301 redirected "www.brandx.com" to "brandx.com" instead of the otherway. Since then, our website no longer turns up for the search "brandx" on Google. We have reversed the mistake a few days ago, but we're still not turning up, and we used to rank #1 in Google SERP. Could it just be due to timing between the crawls and that our www. site didn't make it in Google's index due to this mistake? We have submitted our new sitemap to google a couple of days ago as well, as a side we're still showing up #1 in Bing's results however. And it should still show up based on SEOMoz's SERP report. Any help would help as I'm growing increasingly concerned.
Technical SEO | | JoeLin0 -
Adding .html To Wordpress Site
I am working on a team (my part is the SEO) where the developer added the .html extension to the permalinks. I don't understand why, on Wordpress, you would do this. Is there any benefit, or penalty for it as an SEO standpoint? I usually just set mine up %postname% as the permalink structure, but I am not the web design lead on this project. I asked the designer why, but he seems to be reluctant to answer any of my emails about his work, (like he is above that or something). Not wanting to make things worse, I dropped it and thought I would ask here since I saw a few posts in reference to it today in the forum. Is there an advantage or disadvantage (either way) to using the .html extension on a Wordpress site?
Technical SEO | | kbloemendaal0 -
What to include on a sitemap for a huge site?
I have a very large site and I'm not sure what all to include on the sitemap page. We have categories such as items1, items2 and in the items1 category are 100 vendors with their individual vendor pages. Should I link all 100 vendor pages on the sitemap or just the main items1 category?
Technical SEO | | CFSSEO0 -
Traffic has dropped from my site.
Hello, I never had amazing traffic, but during the last week my site seems to have almost dropped of search engines. Nothing drastic has changed during this time that I can see would have caused this. The site is http://www.comparebestodds.com Does any one have any ideas that can help? Thanks
Technical SEO | | jwdesign0