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.
Changing from .com to .com.au
-
Hi All, we are looking for some guidance please, if at all possible. We have .com domain (the domain is older than 10 years), we have been using it for 2 years. We also have .com.au version of the domain (the domain is 2 years old, pointing to the .com domain) and isn't being used. We are an Australian based company. Our question is, should we be using .com.au instead of .com and if so, how would you advise going about doing the change over without having huge SEO impact on our business (negatively). We are on the home page for most of the searches we have optimized for, but we are always below the .com.au's - which is why we are considering the possibility of the move? Any advice would be GREATLY appreciated
-
Thank you for your feed back. Sorry for timely response I am inundated with work and have had an ill 2 two year old and Telsta line outage ( Aussie service provider ).
I have chosen to stay with the .com mainly because I am starting to get weekly responses from google searches and actually just closed a big deal from someone who found us on google. So if it works don't to change it. I do agree with focusing on local links, which is what I have been doing over the past 4 - 6 weeks and it has increase our local ranking lately. Going to focus on that and build on local linking. According to Moz Search Visibility in the past two weeks we have had a higher visibility result than our competitors. As far as my international search result go that's an added bonus but not our main focus.
All our hard work on SEO for our website seems to be paying off now. So going to stay with the .com than risk the move.
Thank you. -
I see that you already decided to stick with the .com domain.
It's fine, albeit a conservative choice, even though I would have started considering more seriously the idea of migrating to a .com.au domain name if - as you say - you're struggling vs those ccTlds domains, which outrank you even if objective factors (link profile, DA, PA) are better in your case.
I say it because of the lift effect a ccTld may mean: given parity of pondered factor, one ranking signal improved can provide you a big positive change.
However, I agree with you that migrating your domain may be a risk because of all the things that can go wrong during a migration.
Therefore, look at others geotargeting signals. For instance, look at from where your backlinks are coming. You say you have clients from all over the world, therefore I suspect that you target the global market also when creating the link profile of your site, and considered less important earning links from local websites or sites targeting your region.
Maybe you should start targeting more also those sites, so to give a clear geotargeting sitgnal to Google.
Obviously, this is a generic suggestion, as I don't know that much about your site and niche, but remember: international SEO is not just about domain terminations and geo-targeting in Search Console, but also many others signals, being the origin of inbound links one of the most relevant ones.
-
Hi Verve,
Sorry haven't responded straight away. My two year has been very ill and consumed all of my time. Firstly thank you for your response.My answer to John above would pretty much the same to yours so not going to copy paste.
Thank you for taking the time to respond. I think .com is worth sticking with because of current ranking I have had three leads in the last two days from my rankings, but I do believe I am falling short one top spots because of the .com / .au difference. After a lot of consideration, pro's vs cons I think its best to stick with the .com changing to .com.au I think will have to much of a negative ranking response and may take 6 months to a year to recover.
Thank you again for taking the time to response. Enjoy the rest of your week! -
Hi John,
Sorry haven't responded straight away. My two year has been very ill and consumed all of my time. Firstly thank you for your response.I'm in the top three - eight for most searches and when using location specific ( Gold Coast ) then we are number one, two or three. It just seems we fighting against .com.au domain rather than design quality or content source for the top spots.
We do have clients in Canada, UK, Saudi, South Africa & China but our focus is the Australian market, everything else is a bonus.
I have given it sooo much thought and I keep believing .com is the one to stick with but I am left with the .com.au doubt over ranking top positioning within Australia.
Thank you. -
HI Kevin,
I also agree with what John said above. " depends on how you set up the .com."
In summary, there are no TLDs ( Top Level Domain .com. .org etc ) that Google finds preferential to others; they are all treated equally in rankings. There are some geo-specific TLDs ( Like yours ) that Google will default to a specific country and use that as an indicator that the website is more important in a specific geographic region. But all TLDs are treated equally.
Ref: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.au/2015/07/googles-handling-of-new-top-level.html
If you think your ranking is due to .com? then you need have clear competitors analysis metrics before switching from .com to .com.au . But For sure it will have impact.
-
It depends on your customer and how you set up the .com.
Have you selected an geo-targeting for your website? This article could be of assistance https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/62399?hl=en
Also is your customer based solely in Australia? If your customer is only Australia based it maybe worth considering a change. Need more data. ie is Australia, the State or town in the Title visible on each search?
Also for the sites ranking above you - need more competitive analysis, than .au as the possible cause. Worthy discussion.
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
-
Change Google's version of Canonical link
Hi My website has millions of URLs and some of the URLs have duplicate versions. We did not set canonical all these years. Now we wanted to implement it and fix all the technical SEO issues. I wanted to consolidate and redirect all the variations of a URL to the highest pageview version and use that as the canonical because all of these variations have the same content. While doing this, I found in Google search console that Google has already selected another variation of URL as canonical and not the highest pageview version. My questions: I have millions of URLs for which I have to do 301 and set canonical. How can I find all the canonical URLs that Google has autoselected? Search Console has a daily quota of 100 or something. Is it possible to override Google's version of Canonical? Meaning, if I set a variation as Canonical and it is different than what Google has already selected, will it change overtime in Search Console? Should I just do a 301 to highest pageview variation of the URL and not set canonicals at all? This way the canonical that Google auto selected might get redirected to the highest pageview variation of the URL. Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SDCMarketing0 -
Ranking dropped after changing title tag
I recently changed my company's site homepage title tag to make it start with our target keyword. The page was originally at page #7 or #8 and dropped to page #17 directly after I changed the page title. Is this normal? Is it's a temporary drop or should I change it back to the previous title.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ForumOne0 -
.com or other TLD?
Hi, We are in the process of considering our domain url options for a new site. The plan is to migrate other site (bringing their link juice) to an main brand level domain. At the moment our desired .com url is unattainable however from a band perspective another extension e.g (.group) would probably be a better brand fit - however I wanted to know what the implications might be from an SEO perspective. At the moment some of our sub domains are ranking extremely well for desired keywords. Assuming we implement the correct redirect rules to maintain these rankings, would there be any other implication for our rankings (particularly in the UK and US) for not using a .com domain and using an alternatve TLD extension. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | carlsutherland0 -
Changing Brand and Domain Name - SEO Impacts
Hi everyone I'm hoping a few of you can help me out... We're an online-one retailer and we're currently looking at rebranding.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | piazza
This is for commercial reasons: Our current name is difficult for customers to spell It's not wholly representative of what we now offer We want to push offline and social marketing to help increase or DA In a nutshell, our current name implies 'cheap' and we're moving more upmarket.
Our DA is only 10, and a re-brand will make our brand more marketable.
A stronger brand and DA will help us climb up the rankings quickly - last year we ranked no 1 for a relatively competitive term before dropping a few places. In terms of current traffic: 30% is via SEO (we have a low DA but rank ok for certain phrases) 70% is via adwords We had our website redesigned last year and it performs well.
The idea is to have a new brand logo and colours and move to a new domain.
We will keep all our existing products and content. Please could anyone let me know the implications of this move?
What are potential pitfalls, and what will we need to do to alert Google?
I have read about 301 redirects, would these be required? As always, any help is very much appreciated. Many thanks Abs0 -
Pagination loading with using AJAX. Should I change this?
Hello, while I was checking this site; http://www.disfracessimon.com/disfraces-adultos-16.html I found that the pagination is working this way http://www.disfracessimon.com/disfraces-adultos-16.html#/page-2
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite
http://www.disfracessimon.com/disfraces-adultos-16.html#/page-3 and content is being loaded using AJAX. So, google is not getting the paginated results. Is this a big issue or there is no problem?
Should I create a link for See All Products or there is not a big issue? Thank you!0 -
Change url structure and keeping the social media likes/shares
Hi guys, We're thinking of changing the url structure of the tutorials (we call it knowledgebase) section on our website. We want to make it shorter URL so it be closer to the TLD. So, for the convenience we'll call them old page (www.domain.com/profiles/profile_id/kb/article_title) and new page (www.domain.com/kb/article_title) What I'm looking to do is change the url structure but keep the likes/shares we got from facebook. I thought of two ways to do it and would love to hear what the community members thinks is better. 1. Use rel=canonical I thought we might do a rel=canonical to the new page and add a "noindex" tag to the old page. In that way, the users will still be able to reach the old page, but the juice will still link to the new page and the old pages will disappear from Google SERP and the new pages will start to appear. I understand it will be pretty long process. But that's the only way likes will stay 2. Play with the og:url property Do the 301 redirect to the new page, but changing the og:url property inside that page to the old page url. It's a bit more tricky but might work. What do you think? Which way is better, or maybe there is a better way I'm not familiar with yet? Thanks so much for your help! Shaqd
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ShaqD0 -
Combine .com and .co.uk domain? So forward .co.uk to .com for SEO?
Hello, A new client of mine has an .com and an .co.uk domain. Both the same content (and they don't have the capacity to make specific content on both domains). I am thinking building al domain authority to 1 domain. In this case the .com domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Seeders
And forward the .co.uk to this .com domain.
In this way, the .com will rank in both UK as in other English speaking countries, right? Or not?
Or should I use the rel="alternate" hreflang="x" tag? I am not sure. But I do know big brands rank high in the Netherlands with .com domains (for example booking.com). Looking forward on feedback on best practices here... Thanks!0 -
Will changing Google Places address hurt rankings?
I have a client transferring ownership of their service business (photo booth rental). The current listed address will change, so my main concern is preserving the rankings during the transition. Should I change the Google Local listing to a new physical address, or change it to "serve a surrounding area"? It seems best to set as "serving a surrounding area", but I know Google is really weird about making local listing changes. I've seen and heard about countless listings falling completely off the map after being updated. Any advice appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Joes_Ideas0