What is the best way to replace a .co.uk with a .com name
-
Hi i would like to know about my site which is www.in2town.co.uk which i am currently revamping and i am now in the process of buying a .com name and would like to know the best way to uise it.
What i mean is, i have a lot of links going to the www.in2town.co.uk and would like to know should i do a permantent redirect to the .co.uk with the .com or is it possible to have the co.uk replaced with the .com
i am trying to work out the best way to do this at the moment as i have never done this before. now after buying the .com for my domain name i would like to know should i use it as a redirect to my main site, or should i develop a sister site and use it.
any advice would be great.
-
Hi Diane.
As I understand it, your site is currently focused on the UK and you have a .co.uk domain. You have acquired the .com domain and wish your site to address an international audience.
My suggestion would be to make the change as follows:
-
migrate your existing site to the .com domain. Either the default domain will be UK English, or you would create a folder for the UK.Your new URLs would look like www.intown.com/uk, www.intown.com/es, www.intown.com/fr. Each of these directories would represent a targeted country for which you have localized content.
-
ensure your content for each area is truly localized. First, be sure to use the right dialect of the language. For example, Spanish for Spain is not the same as Spanish for Mexico, There is a significant difference. Next, be sure to use the right monetary units and systems of measurements for the chosen country. Also use the proper meta language tag. Each of these actions is designed to clearly inform your users and Google the content is directed for a specific country.
-
using Google WMT set your geographic target for each country. For example, the /es section would be for Spain. Assuming you performed the other steps correctly this step shouldn't be necessary, but I recommend it because it is easy to do and helps ensure the site is properly directed in case other steps are missed
-
you can use geo-targeting but I suggest only using it on your home page. Offer images of the flags of various countries to allow visitors to select their preferred country. Place this images in a prominent position at the top of your site.
-
while you are working on this migration, keep the new site blocked with robots.txt. Once the new site is up and running, you will need to make the switch. Place a 301 redirect from the old .co.uk domain to the new .com domain. Ensure the 301 is working properly and then (very important) remove the robots.txt block of the .com site.
The .com site will now be your new site. It will take about 30 days for the site URLs to be updated in Google SERPs.
As a final step, any time you migrate your site you want to ensure all links under your control, both internal and external, point to the new URL. Any signatures, social pages, etc. should all be updated. There will be a minor loss of link juice due to the move which should be easily offset by the new traffic you will receive once you target other countries. As you earn links from the new countries, be sure to obtain them on that country's page rather then the root home page. For example, links from France should ideally go to your /fr home page or one of the French internal pages.
Congratulations on obtaining the .com and good luck.
-
-
I agree with both of them. Dont do it. Work on what you have and make it the best it can be.
People dont like duplicates, and Google doesnt like duplicates either
-
You will likely need the assistance of your hosting company in making the change, best to run your intentions past them via a support ticket.
As you intend to go international with your website, a .com would make sense. Just changing the Top Level Domain (tld) from .co.uk to .com is a simple process and low risk. Just need to inform Google (via GWT) and the other search engines the moment the change happens.
Your content won't be affected, as the only change will be the tld. When search engine bots revisit your site, they will take a cached copy and soon after reindex your site with the .com, so long as the domain name (in2town) and the page names remain the same. Lowest risk strategy.
There are other considerations such as Language. Will your expanded target audience all speak/read English, or will you need to have the website in multiple languages. If so, there are SEO considerations there.
Best of luck
-
i am looking at making the site international as i want to attract spain, france, and america. can you recommend the best way of doing this as i do not want to cause problems with content that is under the co.uk and do i need to mention anything to my hosting company
-
I agree with Maxwell's comments.
Also, if your website is predominantly for UK visitors, may as well stick with .co.uk rather than changing to .com Your website is UK hosted so sticking with the .co.uk ties in nicely.
If your website is international/global then certainly consider changing to .com
If you do, ensure you use Google Webmaster Tools when making the change from .co.uk to .com to notify Google of the change.
Hope that helps.
Regards
Simon
-
I would recommend against developing a sister site, since you will most likely have lots of duplicate content across both sites and the two sites will compete with each other for SERP rankings. Best practice is to use 301 redirects to send traffic from .co.uk to .com or vice versa
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
-
Setting up a site with different extensions (.co.uk and .com)
hi i am setting up a new site but have bought two domains to cover those who may type the wrong version. So i have: regionwithchildren.co.uk and regionwithchildren.com i am just setting up both on my wordpress host with a coming soon page (to include social links and sign up form). but had a few questions: as the main site is .co.uk should i just set up a redirect from the .com to the .co.uk as the root folders on the two will be the same (regionwithchildren) i need to change one as host cant have two identical - what should i change the .com one to? any other considerations for this kind of set up would be much appreciated? thanks neil
Technical SEO | | neilhenderson0 -
Test site got indexed in Google - What's the best way of getting the pages removed from the SERP's?
Hi Mozzers, I'd like your feedback on the following: the test/development domain where our sitebuilder works on got indexed, despite all warnings and advice. The content on these pages is in active use by our new site. Thus to prevent duplicate content penalties we have put a noindex in our robots.txt. However off course the pages are currently visible in the SERP's. What's the best way of dealing with this? I did not find related questions although I think this is a mistake that is often made. Perhaps the answer will also be relevant for others beside me. Thank you in advance, greetings, Folko
Technical SEO | | Yarden_Uitvaartorganisatie0 -
Can hreflang replace canonicalisation ?
Hi Im working with a site that has ALOT of duplicate content and have recommended developer fix via correct use of Canonicalisation i.e the canonical tag. However a US version (of this UK site) is about to be developed on a subfolder (domain.com/uk/ & domain.com/US/ etc so also looking into adopting the hreflang attribute on these. Upon reading up about the hreflang attribute i see that it performs a degree of canonicalisation too. Does that mean that developing the international versions with hreflang means there's no need to apply canonicalistion tags to deal with the dupe content, since will deal with the original dupe content problems as well as the new country related dupe content, via the hreflang ? I also understand that hreflang and canonicalisation can conflict/clash on different language versions of international subfolders etc as per: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Igbrm1z_7Hk In this instance we are only looking at US/UK versions but very likely will want to expand into non english countries too in the future like France for example. So given both the above points if you are using hreflang is it advisable (or even best) to totally avoid the canonical tag ? I would be surprised if the answers yes, since whilst makes logical sense given the above (if the above statements are correct), that seems strange given how important and standard best practice canonical usage seems to be these days. What best ? Use the Hreflang alone, or the Canonical tag alone or both ? What does everyone else do in similar situation ? All Best Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Best way to present a single image from a gallery?
Hi. I want to make a page for each image on my clients gallery, so that each image page will be indexed and rank. (It's a tattoo portal and theres a lot of traffic on specific tattoos) But as the setup is for now, the only way it will be different from the other image pages, is the H1 title. Can you guys give some examples on "spot on" galleries SEO-wise, i could draw some ideas from?
Technical SEO | | MichaelRoscoe0 -
What are the best tools for back links?
I am a new to SEO, please help me in choosing the right tools for back links. I am thinking to buy Ultimate demon, Should I buy it or not? I have a range of you tube videos to rank.
Technical SEO | | Sajiali0 -
Best way to create a shareable dynamic infographic - Embed / Iframe / other?
Hi all, After searching around, there doesn't seem to be any clear agreement in the SEO community of the best way to implement a shareable dynamic infographic for other people to put into their site. i.e. That will pass credit for the links to the original site. Consider the following example for the web application that we are putting the finishing touches on: The underlying site has a number of content pages that we want to rank for. We have created a number of infogrpahics showing data overlayed on top of a google map. The data continuously changes and there are javascript files that have to load in order to achieve the interactivity. There is one infographic per page on our site and there is a link at the bottom of the infographic that deep links back to each specific page on our site. What is the ideal way to implement this infographic so that the maximum SEO value is passed back to our site through the links? In our development version we have copied the youtube approach implemented this as an iframe. e.g. <iframe height="360" width="640" src="http://www.tbd.com/embed/golf" frameborder="0"></iframe>. The link at the bottom of that then links to http://www.tbd.com/golf This is the same approach that Youtube uses, however I'm nervous that the value of the link wont pass from the sites that are using the infographic. Should we do this as an embed object instead, or some other method? Thanks in advance for your help. James
Technical SEO | | jtriggs0 -
.COM vs .CA rankings - .CA ranks on Google.com
Hi SEOMOZers, We have a fairly large retail client with both .COM and .CA domains. Each of the sites are almost identical in design and, in most cases, content (these would be product pages). The .US site has been live for nearly 2.5 years while the Canadian probably over a year younger or so. Both sites are hosted in the US. What we're starting to see as of the last few months are searches that used to rank .COM product pages now rank the Canadian page above the US page on Google.com. We've checked Webmaster Tools for each site and they target the appropriate country. With nearly all examples we've seen, we haven't noticed any more links pointing to the Canadian page, and where this is becoming a widespread occurence we're not convinced it's a linking issue. My question is why Google might see both versions but rank the Canadian page above the US page on Google.com for a search being performed in the US? Does anyone have any ideas on why this may be happening?
Technical SEO | | HarborOneBank0