Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. Switching from a .org to .io (301 domain redirect)

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Switching from a .org to .io (301 domain redirect)

    Technical SEO
    4
    12
    2525
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • w0lfiesmithUK
      w0lfiesmithUK last edited by

      I'm considering switching my main site from a .org to .io address; the .org is an exact match domain which helped to kickstart it a few years ago and now has about 50% repeat visitors, but was thrown off the Apple affiliation program for trademark infringement.

      I've found and purchased a nice (non-infringing) .io domain, and I've read the advice here on how to properly 301 the old domain; but my question is - does it matter that it's .io? Is this going to significantly hurt my rankings, even when everything has been 301'd properly?

      Another thought I had is that I may actually come out better off in the long run, what with Google penalties being applied to exact match domains.

      Is this a ranking suicide? If so, I'm tempted to leave it as is; even without the affiliation, it's making a good amount every month in ad fees that I don't want to disrupt.

      Thanks all!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Adam.Whittles
        Adam.Whittles @w0lfiesmithUK last edited by

        It may well be used mainly by tech start-ups but it is a country specific domain. It is specific to the British Indian Ocean Territory.

        For example, the .tv extension is used mainly by sites with video content but it is in fact a country specific domain for Tuvalu.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • w0lfiesmithUK
          w0lfiesmithUK @NakulGoyal last edited by

          .io isn't country specific though; it's being used by tech start-ups mostly.

          Adam.Whittles 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • w0lfiesmithUK
            w0lfiesmithUK @w0lfiesmithUK last edited by

            That's an excellent idea; I'm in no hurry to move, so this will be a great way to test. Thanks!

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • NakulGoyal
              NakulGoyal last edited by

              James, after reading all the responses you have at the time of writing this answer, I strongly suggest trying to find another .com / .org and do the 301 redirect. That way you "might" have a minor short term loss, but you can regain the affiliation and be better off long term. I agree with Crimson and others, I would not go with the .io domain name. If you are targeting global, why not use a global domain. I hope this helps.

              w0lfiesmithUK 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • CatalystSEM
                CatalystSEM @w0lfiesmithUK last edited by

                I haven't seen a .io in the English SERPs as well, why not register a .io and see if you can get it to rank. The test should take less than a month and if it ranks then you can consider redirecting it to your .io domain.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • CatalystSEM
                  CatalystSEM @w0lfiesmithUK last edited by

                  If you focus on brand building, then yes, you'll offset any losses. The EMD will pick out poor quality EMDs without the requisite quality content.

                  Also, the loss from the 301 is not a short term loss, it's a permanent loss.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • Adam.Whittles
                    Adam.Whittles @w0lfiesmithUK last edited by

                    In that case, I would probably just stay with the .org. Is being a part of the Apple affiliation program essential to your business? If so then I would consider trying to find a different domain.

                    You will probably struggle to rank in the main English language territories with a .io domain. I can't recall ever seeing one in the serps and hadn't even heard of it before this question was asked!

                    Don't be mistaken into thinking that 301 redirecting your old domain to the new one will instantly get the new domain to the same rank as the previous. It doesn't quite work like that. Of course, this will depend on many factors.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • w0lfiesmithUK
                      w0lfiesmithUK @CatalystSEM last edited by

                      Thanks; I'm ok with a short term minor loss. I'm quite worried about the long term implications of exact match domains too though; any losses I do could be offset, surely?

                      CatalystSEM 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • w0lfiesmithUK
                        w0lfiesmithUK @Adam.Whittles last edited by

                        Purely because I couldnt find a suitable .com - thats partly why I had a .org in the first place. Targeting is not geographic specific; anywhere English speaking.

                        Adam.Whittles CatalystSEM w0lfiesmithUK 3 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • CatalystSEM
                          CatalystSEM last edited by

                          I would recommend leaving it as it is because despite the general consensus about 301 redirects transferring all link equity and traffic, the truth of the matter is that you will experience a small permanent loss in traffic every time a 301 redirect is utilized.

                          I would simply not take that risk as there are many things that can go wrong.

                          w0lfiesmithUK 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                          • Adam.Whittles
                            Adam.Whittles last edited by

                            Can I ask, why are you looking at the .io domain extension? Why not a .com? Also what geographic region is your site targeting?

                            Personally, I would be looking at a .com rather than .io, unless you're business/site is targeting the British Indian Ocean Territory 🙂

                            w0lfiesmithUK 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • 1 / 1
                            • First post
                              Last post

                            Got a burning SEO question?

                            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                            Start my free trial


                            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.

                            • See all categories

                            Related Questions

                            • snorkel

                              1000 Pages on old website. What to do with the 301 redirects for this domain?

                              Hi Moz Community, I have a 301 redirect question... I just acquired an old domain: Totally in my niche Domain is 14 years old Website exists of 1000 pages Great amount of backlinks Website is offline since about 2 weeks Will place a new website online asap with new url structure For the 50 best scoring pages I wrote a new, but fully comparable/related article. I will put a 301 redirect from those old to the new pages. My question: What to do with the 950 other url's? Should I put a 301 redirect to the homepage? Should I forward those pages to the 404 page? Should I divide the 950 url's with a 301 redirect to the 50 new ones? Another solution maybe? Any idea what would be the best solution so we can save as much Google juice as possible? Thanks in advance!

                              Technical SEO | | snorkel
                              0
                            • TimHolmes

                              301 redirect adding trailing slash to url

                              I am looking into a .htacess file for a site I look after and have noticed that the urls are all 301 redirecting from a none slash directory to a trailing slashed directory/folders. e.g. www.domain.com/folder gets 301 redirected to www.domain.com/folder/ Will this do much harm and reduce the effect on the page and any links pointing to the site be lessened? Secondly I am not sure what part of my htaccess is causing the redirect. RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.domain.co.uk [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^$
                              RewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.domain.co.uk/$1 [L,R,NE] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.php
                              RewriteRule ^(.)index.php$ /$1 [R=301,L] or could a wordpress ifmodule be causing the problem? Any info would be apreciated.

                              Technical SEO | | TimHolmes
                              0
                            • Oxfordcomma

                              Increase 404 errors or 301 redirects?

                              Hi all, I'm working on an e-commerce site that sells products that may only be available for a certain period of time. Eg. A product may only be selling for 1 year and then be permanently out of stock. When a product goes out of stock, the page is removed from the site regardless of any links it may have gotten over time. I am trying to figure out the best way to handle these permanently out of stock pages. At the moment, the site is set up to return a 404 page for each of these products. There are currently 600 (and increasing) instances of this appearing on Google Webmasters. I have read that too many 404 errors may have a negative impact on your site, and so thought I might 301 redirect these URLs to a more appropriate page. However I've also read that too many 301 redirects may have a negative impact on your site. I foresee this to be an issue several years down the road when the site has thousands of expired products which will result in thousands of 404 errors or 301 redirects depending on which route I take. Which would be the better route? Is there a better solution?

                              Technical SEO | | Oxfordcomma
                              0
                            • Gotmoxie

                              How do I fix a 301 Redirect Loop?

                              Saturday I waas doing some correcting of some duplicate titles, including nofollowing tags, etc. (my main problem was duplicate titles due to tags and categories being indexed). Now this morning I see that one of my pages refuses to load, citing a 301 redirect loop. http://www.incredibleinfant.com/feeding/switching-baby-formula/ Originally, the page was posted under the wrong category. http://www.incredibleinfant.com/uncategorized/switching-baby-formula I resaved it under the correct category (feeding) and now it won't load. Can someone help me figure out how to correct this mess? Thanks so much Heather

                              Technical SEO | | Gotmoxie
                              0
                            • IM_Learner

                              301 Redirect on a PDF, DOCX files?

                              Hi, I have to rename many pdf and docx files. How can I implement 301 redirect on them as they are linked from 'n' number of places? Regards, Shailendra Sial

                              Technical SEO | | IM_Learner
                              1
                            • joony2008

                              Redirecting Root domain to subdirectory by IP addresses (country specific)

                              We are using Wordpress Multisite. so www.mysite.com is our English website and www.mysite.com/sub is our Chinese website Can I redirect Chinese visitors who type "www.mysite.com"  to "www.mysite.com/sub" ? so we want to force redirection to www.mysite.com/sub if our website is visited by Chinese IP Address. I've realized that this is called GeoIP Redirection. and our hosting company already has those database, I guess my job is just to simply insert some code in .htacess My question is, would it affect our SEO later on? and what .htacess code is the best practice here?

                              Technical SEO | | joony2008
                              0
                            • Matthew_Edgar

                              How much authority does a 301 pass to a different domain?

                              Hi, A client of mine is selling his business to a brand new company. The brand new company will be using a brand new domain (no way to avoid that unfortunately) and the current domain (which has tons of authority, links, shares, tweets, etc.) will not be used. Added to that, the new company will be taking over all the current content with just a few minor changes. (I know, I wish we could use the old domain but we can't.) Obviously, I am redirecting all pages on the current domain to the new domain via 301 redirects on a page by page basis. So, current.com/product-page-x.html redirects to new.com/product-page-x.html. My client and the new company both are asking me how much link juice (and other factors) are passed along to the new domain from the old domain. All I can find is "not the full value" or variants thereof.My experience with 301 redirects in the past has been within a single domain and I've seen some of those pages have decent authority and decent rankings as a result of the 301 (no other optimization work was done or links were added). Are there any studies out there that I'm missing that show how much authority/juice gets passed and/or lost via a 301 redirect? Anybody with a similar issue see any trends in page/domain authority and/or rankings? Thanks for any insights and opinions you have.

                              Technical SEO | | Matthew_Edgar
                              0
                            • Weerdboil

                              Delete old site but redirect domain to a new domain and site

                              I just have a quick query and I have a feeling about what the answer is so just wanted to see what you guys thought... Basically I am working on a client site. This client has a few other websites that are divisions of their company. However these divisions/websites are no longer used. They are wanting to delete the websites but redirect the domains to their name main website. They believe this will pass on SEO benefits as these old division sites are old and have a good PR and history. I'm unsure for DEFINITE, which way is correct?

                              Technical SEO | | Weerdboil
                              0

                            Get started with Moz Pro!

                            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                            Start my free trial
                            Products
                            • Moz Pro
                            • Moz Local
                            • Moz API
                            • Moz Data
                            • STAT
                            • Product Updates
                            Moz Solutions
                            • SMB Solutions
                            • Agency Solutions
                            • Enterprise Solutions
                            Free SEO Tools
                            • Domain Authority Checker
                            • Link Explorer
                            • Keyword Explorer
                            • Competitive Research
                            • Brand Authority Checker
                            • Local Citation Checker
                            • MozBar Extension
                            • MozCast
                            Resources
                            • Blog
                            • SEO Learning Center
                            • Help Hub
                            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                            • How-to Guides
                            • Moz Academy
                            • API Docs
                            About Moz
                            • About
                            • Team
                            • Careers
                            • Contact
                            Why Moz
                            • Case Studies
                            • Testimonials
                            Get Involved
                            • Become an Affiliate
                            • MozCon
                            • Webinars
                            • Practical Marketer Series
                            • MozPod
                            Connect with us

                            Contact the Help team

                            Join our newsletter
                            Moz logo
                            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                            • Accessibility
                            • Terms of Use
                            • Privacy

                            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.