Changing domains from .net to .com after 7 month of traffic loss.
-
We are in business since 2005 and we always used the .net version as it was the only one available when we started. In about 2007 we bought the .com version to the person who owned it but we kept using the .net as customers were already used to that version.
In January we started to see a SE traffic loss, not to mention being outranked by several sites (95% of those site spammers). We had no manual penalty but it could be an algorithmic, we are not sure if we even have some sort of penalty or is just that our niche is too spammed.
We are now considering moving the site to the .com version as all our tries of increasing and regaining our ranks were useless (backlink cleanup, disavow tool usage, excellent link building, excellent content creation and social interactions). Our DA and PA are both higher that any of the other ages ranking on top. We have about 3k pages indexed.
What do you guys think? Should we move the site to the .com? (note that the change is ranking-wise, not in terms of branding).
And if we do, should we 301 all pages? or rel=canonical to avoid a possible "penalty flow" to the other domain?
Note: for years, the .com version was/is 301 to the .net one.
Thank you all!
-
Hello Federico,
There are enough tag pages still indexed that I'd go ahead and remove that entire directory in Google Webmaster Tools. You may consider a noindex tag on archive pages as well.
In regard to your original question, I don't think it would necessarily remove an algorithmic penalty, but it would be good for your brand in the long run. If you're going to do a change like that you might as well do it while traffic is low anyway.
Yes, 301 redirect the .net site to the .com site on a page-by-page basis.
I would also look into creating a few more useful non-blog pages on the site. Some type of innovative resource that advertisers and/or publishers would find super useful would help you build up the authority of the main site, which would be important considering how relatively few pages and links you have there compared to the blog. An inforgraphic wouldn't cut the mustard, but I'm sure you can come up with something since it is a very well-done site visually.
-
There's been a lot of chatter about changing domains when there's no manual penalty and some claim it worked pretty well.
All tag pages are set to noindex, so if some are still showing that's because Google hasn't removed them yet or even still indexing them. It isn't a wordpress theme either, it is an in-house designed and programmed website, including the blog.
-
Hi,
if you were doing 301 redirect (permanent) from the COm to the NET, don't change that. According to me, it will not change anything.
I have quickly checked your website and sure, you have a lot of pages indexed but it's 70% of Wordpress Tag pages; useless pages.
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
-
Do we get de-indexed for changing some content and tags frequently? What is the scope in 2017?
Hi all, We are making some changes in our website content at some paragraphs and tags with our main keywords. I'm just wondering if this is going to make us de indexed from Google? Because we recently dropped in rankings when we added some new content; so I am worried whether there are any chances it will turn more risky when we try to make anymore changes like changing the content. There are actually many reasons a website gets de indexed from Google but we don't employ any such black hat techniques. Our website got a reputation with thousands of direct traffic and organic search. However I am curious to know what are the chances of getting de indexed as per the new trends at Google? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Sub Domain rel=canonical to Main Domain
Just a quick one, i have the following example scenario. Main Domain: http://www.test.com Sub Domain: http://sub.test.com What I am wondering is I can add onto the sub domain a rel=canonical to the main domain. I dont want to de-index the whole sub domain just a few pages are duplicated from the main site. Is it easier to de-index the individual sub domain pages or add the rel=canonical back to the main domain. Much appreciated Joseph
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Joseph-Vodafone0 -
Traffic exchange referral URL's
We have a client who once per month is being hit by easyihts4u.com and it is creating huge increases in their referrals. All the hits go to one page specifically. From the research we have done, this site and others like it, are not spam bots. We cannot understand how they choose sites to target and what good it does for them, or our client to have hits all on one days to one page? We created a filter in analytics to create what we think is a more accurate reflection of traffic. Should be block them at the server level as well?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Teamzig0 -
Steps to Improve Page Rank and Domain Authority
Hi If the quality of web pages is very good I believe rankings should reflect this. My domain is at least 3 years old.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SEOguy1
What steps would you recommend short term and long term in terms of how to improve page rank and domain authority? Thanks.0 -
Help identifying cause for total rank loss
Hello, Last week I noticed one of my pages decreased in rank for a particular query from #8 to #13. Although I had recently made a few minor edits to the page (added an introductory paragraph and left-column promo to increase word count), I thought the reason for the decrease was due to a few newly ranked pages that I hadn't seen before. In an attempt to regain my original position, I tried to optimize the meta title for the singular form of the word. After making this change, I fetched and rendered the page as Google (status = partial) and submitted the page for indexing (URL only, not including on-page links). Almost immediately after submitting, the page dropped from #13 out of the top 50. I've since changed the meta title back to what it was originally and let Google crawl and index the page on its own, but the page is still not in the top 50. Could the addition of the page description and left column promos tipped the scales of keyword stuffing? If I change everything back to the way it was originally, is it reasonable to think I should regain my original position below the new pages? Any insights would be greatly appreciated!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jmorehouse0 -
Loss of 85-90% of organic traffic within the last 2 weeks.
Hey Everybody, Have a client that recently came to us asking for SEO help. Did some initial analysis on their current SEO status and most everything looked pretty good. On-page work was pretty good, nothing really lacking there other then missing alt tags for all images. Their linking profile looked good too. Lots of good links from quality sources, all relevant. Client has done some good press releases. They could probably use a bit more focus in their content as it is somewhat general and not keyword focused. Initially it didn't look like they needed any help with their SEO, so was a bit curious as to why they contacted us. Today we get their google analytics information and immediately noticed that they have had a 85-90 percent drop in organic traffic from all major search engines that started about two weeks ago. If all their SEO looks to be done properly, any ideas what would account for the massive drop in traffic? The only thing that looks like may have happened is that they may have dropped a couple spots from position #1 to position 2-3 for some of their highest traffic terms. Even if that is the case, I would not expect such a high drop off in terms of organic traffic. Just curious as to what anyone else can attribute the huge drop in traffic to or what else may help identify the issue. It's almost as if analytics was turned off or removed from the site, but that is not the case.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Whebb0 -
301 Redirect Asp.net Help
Hey, we are redesigning the site and we are changing a lot of urls to make them more SEO friendly But some of the old urls have PR 4-5 What is the best way to do about this? How to do a 301 redirect for specific pages in asp.net Or do you recommend something elsE? Thanks in advance
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Madz0 -
Massive drop in Google traffic after upping pagecount 8-fold.
I run a book recommendation site -- Flashlight Worthy. It's a collection of original, topical book lists: "The Best Books for Healthy (Vegetarian) Babies" or "Keystone Mysteries: The Best Mystery Books Set in Pennsylvania" or "5 Books That Helped Me Discover and Love My Italian Heritage". It's been online for 4+ years. Historically, it's been made up of: a single home page ~50 "category" pages, and ~425 "book list" pages. (That 50 number and 425 number both started out much smaller and grew over time but has been around 425 for the last year or so as I've focused my time elsewhere.) On Friday, June 15 we made a pretty big change to the site -- we added a page for every Author who has a book that appears on a list. This took the number of pages in our sitemap from ~500 to 4,149 overnight. If an Author has more than one book on the site, the page shows every book they have on the site, such as this page: http://www.flashlightworthybooks.com/books-by/Roald-Dahl/2805 ..but the vast majority of these author pages have just one book listed, such as this page: http://www.flashlightworthybooks.com/books-by/Barbara-Kilarski/2116 Obviously we did this as an SEO play -- we figured that our content was getting ~1,000 search entries a day for such a wide variety of queries that we may as well create pages that would make natural landing pages for a broader array of queries. And it was working... 5 days after we launched the pages, they had ~100 new searches coming in from Google. (Ok, it peaked at 100 and dropped down to a steady 60 or so day within a few days, but still. And then it trailed off for the last week, dropping lower and lower every day as if they realized it was repurposed content from elsewhere on our site...) Here's the problem: For the last several years the site received ~30,000 search entries a month... a little more than 1,000 a day on weekdays, a little lighter on weekends. This ebbed and flowed a bit as Google made tweaked things (Panda for example), as we garnered fresh inbound links, as the GoodReads behemoth stole some traffic... but by and large, traffic was VERY stable. And then, on Saturday, exactly 3 weeks after we added all these pages, the bottom fell out of our search traffic. Instead of ~1,000 entries a day, we've had ~300 on Saturday and Sunday and it looks like we'll have a similar amount today. And I know this isn't just some Analytics reporting problem as Chartbeat is showing the same drop. As search is ~80% of my traffic I'm VERY eager to solve this problem... So: 1. Do you think the drop is related to my upping my pagecount 8-fold overnight? 2. Do you think I'd climb right back into Google's good graces if I removed all the pages at once? Or just all the pages that only list one author (which would be the vasy majority). 3. Have you ever heard of a situation like this? Where Google "punishes" a site for creating new pages out of existing content? Really, it's useful content -- and these pages are better "answers" for a lot of queries. When someone searches for "Norah Ephron books" it's better they land on a page of ours that pulls together the 4 books we have than taking them to a page that happens to have just one book on it among 5 or 6 others by other authors. What else? Thanks so much, help is very appreciated. Peter
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | petestein1
Flashlight Worthy Book Recommendations
Recommending books so good, they'll keep you up past your bedtime. 😉0