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.
Moving from a .org to a .com
-
We have been a .org website for as long as the web as been around. We just recently got the .com for our organization and wondered what the transition process would be like. We offer a lot of content to help parents with parenting and so as a content driven site we have about 13k external links and 1,200 linking root domains links to our site. Will we loose all our links in the transition to the .com? Is there a way to do this well that helps our brand and also retains our google ranking? Thanks so much for any and all help.
-
Hi there,
If you have the potential to acquire movieguide.com, that's a great domain name. That said, you're right that this is a crazy competitive space and some of the competitors are giants like IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes!
One option is to buy the .com and redirect it to the .org. If you engage in offline advertising (magazines, on the subway, etc.), you could use the .com because it does look more professional. You could have the .org continue to be the resolving website, after the .com is 301 redirected.
We are always hesitant to recommend redirection (especially of an entire domain) if you don't have to due to the risk of lost rankings. The rankings are usually not too hard to get back, but it's never a sure thing.
-
Hi,
CleverPhD has a great response, but I wanted to add specifically that if you do this move, you will not lose the authority of those 13k links / 1,200 linking domains if you do the 301 redirection process properly. The guides linked to in CleverPhD's comment will help.
301 redirects pass the majority of authority from one URL to another, but you may also want to create a list of the top linking websites from that 1,200 and contact them after you have completed the move, asking them to update their links to you. This will ensure that you retain your best links on top of properly redirecting all the others.
-
Question - why move to the .com? If you are a non-profit, you want to stay .org and just redirect the .com to your .org.
If you are moving to the .com, it would be like any other domain name move. The key, you need to really plan your move and make sure you have your 301 redirects in place that is specific as possible for all of your old pages pointing to new pages. In other words, don't redirect everything to your new home page. Ideally, your redirects should be 1 to 1. Old page A on .org redirects to New page A on .com. Old page B on .org redirects to New page B on .com. Rinse repeat for as many pages as you have. Yes, it is tedious, but yes worth it if you do want to retain your traffic and rankings. The more work you do prior to the switch the better.
I would advise you to read everything about the Moz migration from SEOMoz
http://moz.com/blog/domain-migration-lessons
http://moz.com/webinars/domain-migrations-lessons-from-the-moz-transition
http://moz.com/rand/10-traffic-graphs-seomoz-moz-domain-migration/
Also, lots of Domain Name Transfer - Site Transfer Type Checklists
http://moz.com/blog/achieving-an-seo-friendly-domain-migration-the-infographic
http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2013/04/29/big-content-site-migration-tips/
Good luck!
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
-
Moved company 'Help Center' from Zendesk to Intercom, got lots of 404 errors. What now?
Howdy folks, excited to be part of the Moz community after lurking for years! I'm a few weeks into my new job (Digital Marketing at Rewind) and about 10 days ago the product team moved our Help Center from Zendesk to Intercom. Apparently the import went smoothly, but it's caused one problem I'm not really sure how to go about solving: https://help.rewind.io/hc/en-us/articles/*** is where all our articles used to sit https://help.rewind.io/*** is where all our articles now are So, for example, the following article has now moved as such: https://help.rewind.io/hc/en-us/articles/115001902152-Can-I-fast-forward-my-store-after-a-rewind- https://help.rewind.io/general-faqs-and-billing/frequently-asked-questions/can-i-fast-forward-my-store-after-a-rewind This has created a bunch of broken URLs in places like our Shopify/BigCommerce app listings, in our email drips, and in external resources etc. I've played whackamole cleaning many of these up, but these old URLs are still indexed by Google – we're up to 475 Crawl Errors in Search Console over the past week, all of which are 404s. I reached out to Intercom about this to see if they had something in place to help, but they just said my "best option is tracking down old links and setting up 301 redirects for those particular addressed". Browsing the Zendesk forms turned up some relevant-ish results, with the leading recommendation being to configure javascript redirects in the Zendesk document head (thread 1, thread 2, thread 3) of individual articles. I'm comfortable setting up 301 redirects on our website, but I'm in a bit over my head in trying to determine how I could do this with content that's hosted externally and sitting on a subdomain. I have access to our Zendesk admin, so I can go in and edit stuff there, but don't have experience with javascript redirects and have read that they might not be great for such a large scale redirection. Hopefully this is enough context for someone to provide guidance on how you think I should go about fixing things (or if there's even anything for me to do) but please let me know if there's more info I can provide. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | henrycabrown1 -
M.ExampleSite vs mobile.ExampleSite vs ExampleSite.com
Hi, I have a call with a potential client tomorrow where all I know is that they are wigged-out about canonicalization, indexing and architecture for their three sites: m.ExampleSite.com mobile.ExampleSite.com ExampleSite.com The sites are pretty large... 350k for the mobiles and 5 million for the main site. They're a retailer with endless products. They're main site is not mobile-responsive, which is evidently why they have the m and mobile sites. Why two, I don't know. This is how they currently hand this: What would you suggest they do about this? The most comprehensive fix would be making the main site mobile responsive and 301 the old mobile sub domains to the main site. That's probably too much work for them. So, what more would you suggest and why? Your thoughts? Best... Mike P.S., Beneath my hand-drawn portrait avatar above it says "Staff" at this moment, which I am not. Some kind of bug I guess.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Should I migrate .co.uk to .com?
I have previously searched the forum and could not find a definitive answer on this subject so would appreciate any guidance. I have just joined a new company, we have a .co.uk site which gets lots of traffic. We have a .com site which is targeting USA and .com/de/ targeting Germany. 'hreflang' is configured on the .com (between the USA and German sites) but not on .co.uk. This means that in the eyes of search engines (and Moz Pro) the 2 domains are competitors (and the .co.uk has much more presence than the .com in the USA). I know how to fix this and I am in the process of doing so. My question is whether it would make sense to migrate the .co.uk site to .com As previously mentioned the .co.uk site already does very well both in the UK and around the world (as our product is well known in our niche). As .co.uk can only primarily be targeted to UK would our global reach increase enough to justify migrating it to .com? We have dealers/distributors in maybe 30 countries and are continuing to expand, we will at point point add additional languages so my suggestion is that we migrate now as the authority of the .co.uk will help the emerging markets as well as increase our visibility in markets that are not currently primary targets. We are also in the process of hiring new staff specifically to focus on Content Marketing. So again this suggests having the 1 domain will make sense in the long run (as any value gained from content marketing success will be seen by all country/language focussed sites). I am also planning to rebuild the sites in the next few months as the current ones are not fit for purpose so the migration would coincide with this (I know this is not ideal). Apologies for the lengthy question, I hope the additional background information will help in providing some feedback to help me make the decision. David
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JamesCrossland0 -
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 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | creativeground0 -
Is there any benefit of having a .tv tld instead of a .com for a video centric website?
We are launching a video dense website. Is there any evidence that having a .tv tld can help with video optimization? We are trying to find proof that Google looks at a .tv tld favorably for video SEO as opposed to a .tv website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VanguardCommunications0 -
Is having a .uk.com domain a hindrance for long-term SEO?
I know there has been some mention on Moz Q&A for .uk.com, but not for at least 3 years. So I wanted to see if any Mozzers out there knew if having a .uk.com domain would hinder our SEO long-term? Our company is finally now taking SEO seriously and we're planning some great stuff for the year ahead, but I have a feeling that our .uk.com domain may prevent us from out-ranking some of the bigger companies out there. Does anyone have any thoughts about this out there? Thanks 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JamesPearce0 -
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 -
Schema.org Implementation: "Physician" vs. "Person"
Hey all, I'm looking to implement Schema tagging for a local business and am unsure of whether to use "Physician" or "Person" for a handful of doctors. Though "Physician" seems like it should be the obvious answer, Schema.org states that it should refer to "A doctor's office" instead of a physician. The properties used in "Physician" seem to apply to a physician's practice, and not an actual physician. Properties are sourced from the "Thing", "Place", "Organization", and "LocalBusiness" schemas, so I'm wondering if "Person" might be a more appropriate implementation since it allows for more detail (affiliations, awards, colleagues, jobTitle, memberOf), but I wanna make sure I get this right. Also, I'm wondering if the "Physician" schema allows for properties pulled from the "Person" schema, which I think would solve everything. For reference: http://schema.org/Person http://schema.org/Physician Thanks, everyone! Let me know how off-base my strategy is, and how I might be able to tidy it up.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mudbugmedia0
