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.
Considering Switching Domain from .ca to .com for Service Area Business - What is the Risk / Reward?
-
Hello,
Thank you to anyone who takes the time to share their thoughts on this. I will preface this by saying that I am very new to the community and have lots to learn, so please forgive any obvious errors on my part. That having been said am very happy to receive positive criticism and feedback
Quick Background:
- We are a high end mobile wellness business based in Toronto Canada offering in home/office servicing including: yoga, pilates, nutrition, meditation, chiropractors, etc...
- As we are expanding  we are transitioning form new leads coming from business partners and word of mouth to driving new business online
- As such we have an new Squarespace site (which is the first site I ever built, so any feedback is welcome) and are venturing into social media, SEO, local citations etc... for the first time
- We have a significant content catalogue originally  for client and instructor education that we are now repurposing for this new digital adventure but have not yet deployed
- While currently focused in Torotno, we have plans to expand to several other countries in the next two years.
- As the site is quite new and we have little content or incoming links I was thinking now is the time to switch to .com from .ca before we roll out
Website: www.anahana.ca
Risk Reward? & Other Issues?
- Both domains are currently verified with Squarespace, and it seems easy enough to switch. What could blow up by making this switch which I might not be aware of?
- Our emails and business card use the .ca, but I don't think this would matter too much 6-12 months out... is there something else I might be missing on this?
- .com and using subfolders or subdomains as opposed to country specific TLDs ? This is something I am still working on understanding, but from what I have learned thus far, if we are going to progressively roll out a large content library, is it not better from an SEO standpoint to have this all in one domain?
- Local SEO and legal considerations for TLDs when operating local Service Area Businesses.
I am sure there are many other angles here that I am missing and am not really looking for any hard answer on much of this, but any general advice, suggested resources, and experienced insights would be extremely helpful.
Thanks so much,
cj
-
This is very helpful. Thank you very much for the answer.
There is lots to learn!!
-
Usually when you move pages from one URL to another, you can notice a minor dip in performance initially. This is because backlinks which hit your site through 301 redirects will give you less SEO equity than those which hit your website directly
That's just at the page level, but when the URL of every single page on a site changes, you get the same thing (it just encapsulates your total SEO performance rather than a small fraction of it). As long as the redirect migration project is handled properly by an expert at a high level of granularity, usually any performance dip (even for a whole website) is minimal
Even if your architecture doesn't change and there's no redesign, if all of your pages move from one domain to another that still counts as a 'migration' in SEO terms and you still need to take extensive measures to prevent traffic tail-off
An SEO expert should be crawling all of your current site's pages **AND **adding in historic URL (which may no longer be live) from Analytics / Omniture / Search Console. In that way, even legacy pages which may previously have been ignored can be properly redirected (rather than 'just' your live URLs before the move) which can add a little extra padding and security
You need to retain hosting on the old domain so that it can continue to host either a .htaccess or web.config file (Apache (Linux) vs IIS (Windows). This file will coordinate your granular and rule-based redirects
Having a list of your currently live (old domain) and legacy (no longer live) URLs is great but it's not enough. It's even better to scan all of those URLs using something like URL Profiler (which relies upon API keys and subscriptions to multiple other data sources, including Moz) to determine for yourself - which of these URLs are worth using your granular redirects on?
Typically you end up with a big spreadsheet that looks like this:
Because you're aggregating data from multiple sources, leave it to a data analyst. Don't allow such a project to be handled by an amateur. Invest in insuring your SEO performance by working with pros...
-
Hi there, if anything it'll help with local SEO as a type of trust signal
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
-
What Service Page Strategy Should We Use to Target City-Specific Local Intent Service Keywords?
Hey guys! We are targeting a number of cities in the Nassau and Suffolk County areas for foundation repair, insulation, and mold remediation keywords, and we were debating on creating city-specific pages for each location and service, or creating one service page for each type of service that contains all of the services and solutions within that service category for each city. Example: City-Specific Pages for Each Service: One page for say foundation repair, one page for foundation crack repair, one page for foundation problems, etc. (for each target city) Service Category Pages for Each City: One page for foundation contractors that lists all services on one page in sections. Which one do you think is better for local SEO and rankings? Both seem to have their advantages and disadvantages to me. Just to throw a couple out there, the category pages may not rank as high as the city pages for each individual service if our competitors have a whole page designed for that service and we only have a part of a page covering the topic. At the same time, they would save labor hours, technical issues would be less, and they would be condensed, and we would have WAY less mess on the backend. I appreciate your expert opinion on this one. The site is www. zavzaseal.com in case you want to check us out.
Local SEO | | everysecond0 -
How to rank in Google against a business with the same name?
My client has a coworking space in London, but shares its name with a recruitment company also in London. When searching for my client's brand name, they don't appear anywhere on the first page as this recruitment company dominates. How can I rank prominently for my brand term if there is someone else in these top spots who isn't a direct competitor (in the typical sense)? Thank you!
Local SEO | | WhitewallGlasgow0 -
Local SEO for a business serving multiple small cities
We have a local business that has a showroom in one city, and serve other 5 different small cities (in total 6 small cities). Search volume for the targeted keyword is very low (around 100 each plus minus) with a variety of competition levels. The product is expensive so this justifies the low search volume with a serious user intent.
Local SEO | | Nadiamo44
My question is given the low search volume for each keyword, what would be the best local SEO tactic for this. The website has a DA of 20 with competitors who has similar and higher DAs. Options I am considering: 1. Create unique pages for each location with unique content (no address available so I will have to use a city name postcode)
2. Create pages with the same content (but changing the area of service on the URL, H1 and mention the postcode and the radius of coverage twice in the content) and using a canonical tag to solve the duplicate issue.
In this scenario, I will create the main product pages with the address of the showroom, and mention the area of service covered for the other 5 cities.
3. Given that the 6 cities are part of a greater area, use the greater area to target them all. The keyword of the greater area has a lower search volume than the city keyword. This might work for keywords with low competition but not for ones with high competition levels. Not sure how well search engines will rank the keywords that include the greater area and show the pages for searches in small cities. Any advice on which option to go with or any recommendations for other solutions?0 -
Company with multiple services | multiple locations/states
I have a company that rents, repairs, and sells product both new and used. They also have 3 locations in 3 states and service multiple cities out of the locations (ie... los angeles and orange county). Having a hard time redesigning the website so that it fits for customers to look around and for the best of Organic SEO. The issue seems to be fitting the locations in the mix in order to get the customer to the right area without being too confusing. In the end, I'm thinking well maybe the homepage should just be some content to get them to choose the location first then they can go into silos where they pretty much remain in the location for rentals, repairs, and sales but I'm not sure how having the locations on the home page would affect the site. Obviously, we would be trying to rank the silo locations more but they would be 2-3 pages in on clicks to get to the right section 'if' they started from the home page. We need to do this right from the beginning though because we are working on expanding nationwide one day. Thanks for any help on this manner. (PS> Thought about doing subdomains like locations.example.com or state.example.com and rentals.example.some and shop.example.com but I think that will dilute the rankings)
Local SEO | | Ryan_Marshall1 -
How important is citations for an online business?
If you run an online business, just how important is citation building? Our client does not want to disclose her physical home address from where she operates and the campaign does not consist of any local keywords. Should we then focus on link building and growing the site's DA instead? As well as getting onpage elements optimised. Many thanks in advance for your input!
Local SEO | | Gavo0 -
Two websites, same business name, same NAP
Hi, A client of mine offers loft conversions and wants to make a go of it. So he has a website dedicated to loft conversions. He is also a joiner/carpenter and has another old website which offers general joinery work and insurance work. Both websites have the same business name and same address and phone number. There is only one Google place page for the loft conversions website. The loft conversions website is not ranking as well as we would like locally. Could it be due to the same NAP? What are the best options? Redirect the old website to the loft conversions one (he might not like that idea) Change the address and phone number on one website?(and all subsequent citations?) Would love some help on this!
Local SEO | | AL123al0 -
Google My Business Locations Query- Do I need unqiue Picture File Names for every location
Hello All, I am just in the process of updating all my google business locations for each of my depots. I have been uploading photos but I am wondering if the file names of the photo's need to be unique for every location ? I know I need to describe the picture in the filename so it's good use of keywords but I am wondering if google will see it as spaming if I upload the same product pictures etc to ever google business location ? thanks Pete
Local SEO | | PeteC120 -
2 websites or one .ca and .com
Hi I have a client with a lighting business in Canada but ship to all US- they have ecommerce web site .ca and .com the .ca has always brought more traffic. (they have a store in Canada) they are now redoing the site and trying to decide should they have just one site and the other redirected to it or should they have two and which one the main one- they would like to sell to the us but are obviously stronger in Canada- don't want to lose on both sides.. Appreciate any help!
Local SEO | | maryk920