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.
Redirect old .net domain to new .com domain
-
I have a quick question that I think I know the answer to but I wanted to get some feedback to make sure or see if there's additional feedback.
The long and short of it is that I'm working with a site that currently has a .net domain that they've been running for 6 years. They've recently bought a .com of the same name as well. So the question is:
I think it's obviously preferable to keep the .net and just direct the .com to it. However, if they would prefer to have the .com domain, is 301'ing the .net to the .com going to lose a lot of the equity they've built up in the site over the past years? And are there any steps that would make such a move easier?
Also, if you have any tips or insight just into a general transition of this nature it would be much appreciated. Thanks!
-
Thanks for the responses. Much appreciated!
-
Have you read SEOmoz's excellent guide to redirects? If not, look that over.
In my experience, it doesn't destroy traffic to move from a .somethingelse to a .somethingnew. I've moved from .ca to .com, vice versa, .net to .com etc.
Things to consider:
- Have a crawl of the site (crawl test is great for this, plus I use Screaming Frog to cross-reference)
- Double-check that all the URLs are redirected and working (you can use a test server for this)
- Check analytics (use the last year of data) and look at all the URLs that received even one visit, and make sure they're reflected in the data from the previous two points.
- Sign up both URLs in Webmaster Tools and indicate the change there when it happens. I'd recommend parking the new .com domain on the old .net domain for a bit, registering it in Webmaster Tools first, and then having the switch happen.
Let me know if that helps.
-
Hi there
Well, in theory, most if not all of the "strength" or your links will pass on to the new site if you use a 301 redirect. We've had a recent Matt Cutts video talking about this.
In order to streamline the process, I would replicate an identical site structure on your new .com site. Same /sub-folders/, same primary article names, as similar as you can make it to you .net domain, the better.
This will allow you to 301 redirect the old domain to the new one, pointing the equivalent pages and sub folders to each other - so domain.net/sub-folder/ to domain.com/sub-folder/ and domain.net/article1.html to domain.com/article1.html. This way not only are you ensuring that the user is following the same path as before, but all of the "strength" and previous links are being pointed to their new, equivalent pages.
It's such a big help if you can keep the site structure the same. Now, there may be a case for not wanting to redirect everything - thousands and thousands of 301s can slow down the .htaccess file, not to mention the time it may take. Some pages may not be worth transferring anyway if they have no link juice or are never visited by users. In this case, it's perfectly acceptable to let these return a 404 error.
If you're looking to get the URLs you want to redirect on bulk, look in your XML sitemap. Download that and extract the URLs from there and place them into Excel. Most of the time the listed pages will be the ones you want to redirect. Copy the list into another column, so you now have 2 identical lists. Then simply use the Find & Replace tool on one of the columns, changing .net to .com. You've now got all the URLs you'll want to put into your .htaccess file for redirecting.
Finally, it wouldn't hurt to contact some of the webmasters on the sites where you have your best links. If you tell them you've moved to a .com domain and only that needs changing, they can do the leg-work for you and can ensure that your new domain keeps its strength.
Hope this helps - good luck with the move!
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
-
Linking from & to in domains and sub-domains
What's the best optimised linking between sub-domains and domains? And every time we'll give website link at top with logo...do we need to link sub-domain also with all it's pages? If example.com is domain and example.com/blog is sub-domain or sub-folder... Do we need to link to example.com from /blog? Do we need to give /blog link in all pages of /blog? Is there any difference in connecting domains with sub-domains and sub-folders?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
How to avoid Google penalties being inherited when moving on with a new domain?
Looking for SEOs who have experience with resetting projects by migrating on to a new domain to shed either a manual or algorithmic penalty. My questions are: For algorithmic penalties, what is the best migration strategy to avoid inheriting any kind of baggage? 301, 302, establish no connection between the two sites? For manual penalties, what is the best migration strategy to avoid inheriting any kind of baggage? 301, 302, establish no connection between the two sites? Any other input on these kind of reset projects is appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | spanish_socapro0 -
Reverting back to old domain name.
I've recently been asked by a client if I can foresee any issues with reverting back to their original domain name. With the original domain name they had a pretty decent DA for their sector which they have now lost. Although I do appreciate that over time this might come back, the CEO is very keen to switch back to the old domain. They do currently have 301 redirects from the old domain to the new and have implemented rel canonical. As yet they have not notified Google of the change of address using Webmaster Tools. Can anyone forsee any issues with returning back to the old domain name? They have only been using the new domain name for a couple of months which currently has a DA for 1.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Macrofireball0 -
Unique domains vs. single domain for UGC sites?
Working on a client project - a UGC community that has a DTC model as well as a white label model. Is it categorically better to have them all under the same domain? Trying to figure which is better: XXX,XXX pages on one site vs. A smaller XXX,XXX pages on one site and XX,XXX pages on 10-20 other sites all pointing to the primary site. The thinking on the second was that those domains would likely achieve high DA as well as the primary, and would passing their value to the primary. Thoughts? Any other considerations we should be thinking about?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | intentionally0 -
Merging Sites: Will redirecting the old homepage to an internal page on the new site cause issues?
I've ended up with two sites which have similar content (but not duplicate) and target similar keywords, rather than trying to maintain two sites I would like to merge the sites together. The old site is more of a traditional niche site and targets a particular set of keywords on its homepage, the new site is more of an authority site with a magazine type homepage and targets the same set of keywords from an internal page. My question is: Should I redirect the old site's homepage to the relevant internal page on the new website...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lara_dar
...or should I redirect the old site's homepage to the new site's homepage? (the old site's homepage backlinks are a mixture of partial match keyword anchor text, naked URLs and branded anchor text) I am in two minds (a & b!) (a) Redirecting to the internal page would be great for ranking as there are some decent backlinks and the content is similar (b) But usually when you do a 301 redirect the homepage usually directs to the new homepage and some of the old site's links are related to the domain rather than the keyword (e.g. http://www.site.com) and some people will be looking for the site's homepage. What do you think? Your help is much appreciated (and hope this makes sense...!)0 -
How to 301 redirect old wordpress category?
Hi All, In order to avoid duplication errors we've decided to redirect old categories (merge some categories).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
In the past we have been very generous with the number of categories we assigned each post. One category needs to be redirected back to blog home (removed completely) while a couple others should be merged. Afterwords we will re-categorize some of the old posts. What is the proper way to do so?
We are not technical, Is there a plugin that can assist? Thanks0 -
Should I buy a .co domain if my preferred .com and .co.uk domain are taken by other companies?
I'm looking to boost my website ranking and drive more traffic to it using a keyword rich domain name. I want to have my nearest city followed by the keyword "seo" in the domain name but the .co.uk and .com have already been taken. Should I take the plunge and buy .co at a higher price? What options do I have? Also whilst we're on domains and URL's is it best to separate keywords in url's with a (_) or a (-)? Many thanks for any help with this matter. Alex
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SeoSheikh0 -
Splitting one Website into 2 Different New Websites with 301 redirects, help?
Here's the deal. My website stbands.com does fairly well. The only issue it is facing a long term branding crisis. It sells custom products and sporting goods. We decided that we want to make a sporting goods website for the retail stuff and then a custom site only focusing on the custom stuff. One website transformed and broken into 2 new ones, with two new brand names. The way we are thinking about doing this is doing a lot of 301 redirects, but what do we do with the homepage (stbands.com) and what is the best practice to make sure we don't lose traffic to the categories, etc.? Which new website do we 301 the homepage to? It's rough because for some keywords we rank 3 or 4 times on the first page. Scary times, but something must be done for the long term. Any advise is greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance. We are set for a busy next few months 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Hyrule0