Switching to a .travel domain - (recommendations and suggestions)
-
Hi,
I am looking for an expert advise in terms of domain switching. I am in charge of a little colombian travel agency page "www.brandname.com" and i am thinking about switching to a .travel domain we purchased month ago. - "brandname.travel"
I would like to share some thoughts and would appreciate any comment, suggestions or recommendations.
-
"brandname.travel" url is shorter and more travel related
-
I also think it is easier to remember than "www.brandname.com"
-
we often use "brandname" in communications rather than "brandname travel"
-
url within our site would be shorter
-
i expect google to give more weight to .travel domains
-
we also 301 redirect "brandname.travel" to "www.brandnametravel.com"
Risks:
-
we would loose positioning (for some important keywords we have top positions)
-
less conversion
-
less traffic
-
customer not aware of .travel domains
Question?
-
how long does a recovery take?
-
currently we 301 redirect "brandname".travel to www.brandname.com would this help repositioning our page?
-
If we do this, when? Low search periods?
-How strong do see a .travel domain compared to a non .travel domain?
Any help is greatly appreciated
-
-
Thanks very much for your thoughts Lewis.
The risk you were talking about are the ones which let me doubt to go through with this or not. right now our website url is www.mantarayatravel.com and i would like to switch to just mantaraya.travel as colombia.travel is doing.
I dont have any evidence why google should give more weight to a .travel domain i assume that .travel sites within the travel category might get more weight, its just a personal assumptions..
Mantaraya.travel is shorter and can be seen seperated in "mantaraya" and "travel" and so easier to be remembered. As well its an assumptions.
But your point regarding .com sites more or less convinced me and now before high season i dont wont to risk a downfall of the search volumen.
I then only dont know why companies even buy .travel domains or industry specific domains if .com or country specific TLD are the best choice. But this is another question.
-
Most customers and web site visitors are only aware of the existence of a handful of TLD's such as .com, .org, .net and country specific ones such as .co.uk if you are in the UK.
Therefore moving from a .com site to a .travel site may mean that visitors are confused. They may enter .travel.com and they may not think that www.yourcompany.travel is even a proper URL and assume a part of it is missing.
Research into the postive and negative effects of different TLD's would suggest that .com or the country specific TLD are the best option. So everything else being equal there may be an negative SEO impact of the proposed move.
You say that "i expect google to give more weight to .travel domains" but what is the basis for that expectation? You also say "I also think it is easier to remember than www.brandname.com" which is unlikely to be true.
I strongly believe the downsides are greater than the perceived benefits (a couple of which I have questioned).
Hope this helps!
-
This is something what is difficult to forsee if people get used to .travel domains. Colombia.travel does really well though.
Thanks for your thoughts.
-
Thanks for your thoughts!
Our site is MantarayaTravel.com
We receive about 30% of our traffic from organic search which would be affected thorugh the domain changes.
We are not in a high competitive market and Title Changes already affects positioning quite well sometimes.
I've been never through a domain change and I don't know what to expect but the keyword "travel" is on of the most important keyword
My biggest brainer is the usage of .com at the end of a domain and the non awareness of .travel sites..
-
1. A recovery will take as long as you optimize your content and link building to the main domain, i don't think this redirection will help you repositioning your site , and .travel domain will be easy for users to understand that you have a travel agency or something like that
-
The risks are so huge that if you place them head to head with the "advantages" you won't consider the idea no more.
In my opinion even if you 301 redirect the dot com to the new mantaraya.trave some of the current advantages you have won't recover - ever.
More then that most user will still place a dot com at the end of mantaraya.travel - that's for direct access but still.
I see your main brand mantaraya.com is pretty solid. I don't see a solid reason to flush this.
I am no SEO expert but in my personal opinion if you do decide to move with this migration you will harm your organic traffic so much that you will never actually recover.
The risk list you've posted is covering most o the aspects but maybe it's not as pessimist as it should be.
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
-
Domain: Product brand or company brand?
I work for a company with a very strong brand. We have a product with an even stronger brand. Right now, our product marketing pages look like this: https://www.company.com/product/.... I believe this leads to URL bloat, and I think we're probably missing some search rank on product-branded keywords that we would automatically get if, instead, our product marketing was here: https://www.product.com/.... An example of this structure is Colgate Palmolive (http://www.colgatepalmolive.com/en/us/corp), the makers of Colgate toothpaste (http://www.colgate.com/en/us/oc/). We already own both domains, but of course right now SEO rank is entirely owned by company.com. If we put product marketing at product.com, of course the company site can still link to the product site anywhere, and vice-versa, which means (I think) that both domains help each other out. But we wouldn't have to spend as much time worrying about the branded keyword in product content. I have found some posted opinion that tends to support my hunch here, but I haven't seen anything more concrete in support of it. Has anyone got direct experience with this question?
Branding | | hoosteeno0 -
Switch to naked domain that has higher page authority
Brilliant Moz community! I just started here and find it so helpful and am confident that I can get an answer to this. Our domain is currently https://www.example.com. I have been wanting to move to https://example.com just for a cleaner URL. To my surprise, https://example.com has the same DA but a significantly higher page authority than our current https://www.example.com. Of course my immediate reaction is to 301 to the https://example.com but I wanted to get some advice and anything we should consider before doing this. My other question would be - how is this possible? I don't remember that we ever used that domain but we also had some rather bad developers a couple of years back. Thank you so much in advance!
Branding | | kris-fannin0 -
Is it feasible to try to compete with an established site with a fresh domain any time soon?
Currently I'm looking at a competitor who owns a site with the following metrics: Domain Authority - 39 /100
Branding | | chrisjimallen
Page Authority - 49 /100
Spam Score: 1 /17
93 Root Domains
2,199 Total Links
Page Social Metrics
Facebook - 431 Shares, 17 Likes I'm thinking it would take 12 months+ to become a viable competitor, but thats a complete guess. What are peoples thoughts on undertaking something like this?0 -
Help me decide between 2 domains! Please!
I want to build an authoritive site on the keyword: "baby hazel games" since I want it to be authoritive and easy to brand and to remember. I dont plan to use EMD-s. I like these 2 domains: 1. PlayHazel.com 2. HazelBox.com Help me decide between them. what sounds better, and have greater chance in ur opinion. Feel free to ad domain names ideas, if u have them. Thank you!
Branding | | Catinas970 -
Experience/suggestions in redirecting old URLs (from an existing site) to new URLs under a new domain
Please share your experiences/suggestions in redirecting a set of pages (10,000 or more pages/URLs) from an existing domain to new URLs under a new domain. Thanks in advance!
Branding | | esiow20130 -
Domain name with a hyphen
I am looking at starting a brand new website and purchasing a domain to see my hair product. My question is that domain i am wanting to purchase if a 2 word .com domain but it is not being currently used and it is up for auction for 10K. I am looking a purchasing a domain name that is the same 2 words but a has a hyphen between the 2 works. My assumption is that if I start building content, concentrating on seo (keywords, link building, etc) and brand building that I should not have any problems with my hyphen in the domain. I am looking for feedback and insight from the SEO professionals! Thank you guys in advance. UPDATED 1-29-13 Here is the scenario and I am looking on how you would handle it. **name = my brand name I am looking to purchase a domain within the year: namehair.com I currently am using: namehairbrand.com I have purchased: name-hair.com My concern is if I began my SEO efforts and the brand grows extensively then the person who owns "namehair.com" will raise the price even more than the current price of 10k. I plan on purchasing that domain name within the next 18 months or so and then direct the traffic to the domain "namehair.com". If I put all my efforts into "namehairbrand.com" and then submit to Google that I have changed domains - will I get my butt kicked by Google? Thank you guys - you are really helpful!
Branding | | dsmolinski0 -
Can creating a subfolder and seperate domain blog build external links?
So I am currently going through the creation of a blog with a client that has a company that sells tennis equipment. I have talked to their development team, who is a third-party ecommerce platform, and come up with an idea to create an sub-folder (domain.com/blog) with an article page using their existing framework that would feature full articles in a blog format. Then I would create multiple blogs for them using tumblr and wordpress with their company name and a few with unique names targeted to their niche. These would feature snippets of the content taken from their article page (domain.com/blog) with some responses or reviews on the full articles to further their outreach and then link to the main articles on their article page. These snippets would be divided up amongst the blogs and posted on different days of the week to divide the traffic. Each blog will feature fresh content and focus on a rotating schedule of the latest videos, re-blogs, memes, photos, highlights, scores, upcoming tournament reviews, etc. I will set each one up to rotate through these different topics on different days and times to create a steady stream of traffic. I want to make sure that I stress the fact that I wont be stuffing the unique blogs with links only to the clients company store, I will be making sure to keep it to an amount that isn't spam worthy. Now if these blogs feature rich content including the snippets of the articles from my sub-folder page (domain.com/blog) will these blogs pass link juice to the blog set up on my sub-folder? Also is this a good way to ensure brand awareness and create external links without damaging their reputation? Are there other risks that people have encountered by doing something similar? Please share your experiences so I can make an educated decision.
Branding | | cscoville0 -
Redirecting Domain to Main Domain
I have a site that is rolling out a new "Daily Deals" feature. The feature is found on MyBrandName.com/daily-deals. Would it hurt or help to buy the domain main MyBrandNameDeals.com and redirect it to the initial URL above? I think branding the feature itself could help because it is separate from the rest of the site, but if people bookmark/link to the new domain (MyBrandNameDeals.com), I will lose some of the link juice in the redirect. Are there pros that would outweigh possibly loosing some link juice from the redirect?
Branding | | Hakkasan0