Switching to a .travel domain - (recommendations and suggestions)

[cuchuco]

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

[cuchuco]

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.

[CPU]

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!

[cuchuco]

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.

[cuchuco]

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..

[oneticsoft]

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

[eyepaq]

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.