Move established site from .co.uk to .org - good or bad idea?
-
I am currently considering moving our site from the current .co.uk domain to the .org version which we also own.
The site is established and indexed for 7 years, ranks well and has circa 10k traffic per month which is mainly UK & US traffic.
The reason for the change to the .org domain is to make the site more global facing and give us the opportunity to develop the site into multi language within directories (.org/es/ etc.) and then target those to the local search engines. For the kind of site it is (community based) it wouldn’t really work to split this into lots of separate country targeted domains.
So the choice is to either stick with the .co.uk and add the other foreign language specific content in directories within the .co.uk or move to the .org and do the same (there is also a potential third option of purchasing the .com which is currently unused but that could be pricey!)
We are also planning a big overhaul of the site with redesign, lots of added content and reorganisation of the site – but are thinking that it would be better to move the domain on a 1:1 basis first with the current design, content and URL structure in place and then do the other changes 2 or 3 months down the line.
I have read up on SEOmoz, google guidelines etc on moving a site to a new domain and understand the theoretical approach of moving the site and the steps to take (1to1 301 redirects, sitemaps on old and new etc) and I will retain ownership of the .co.uk so the redirects can remain in place indefinitely.
However having worked so hard to get the site to where it is in the search engines and traffic levels I am very worried about whether the domain change is a good move. I am more than happy to accept a temporary fluctuation in rankings & traffic for 1 – 4 weeks as reported may happen as long as I can be sure it will return after a temporary period and be as strong (or almost as strong) as the previous rankings / traffic.
Looking for peoples experiences to give me the confidence / reassurance to go ahead with this or any info on why I shouldn’t
Thanks in advance for your advice.
Adrian.
-
If you are going to make this site enormously popular then owning the .com will allow you stop the loss of type-in traffic to the .com domain.
For popular .org .gov .net and other domain extensions, lots of visitors instinctively type .com as the domain. I do it often myself when attempting to visit some .gov and .org sites. I am usually surprised at what I find there.
I know of a couple .com domains that get thousands of visitors per day because visitors don't type .gov as the extension.
-
Thanks both for your responses.
Although we enjoy good rankings and good traffic levels we are in one of the most competitive (SEO wise) sector (Gambling Affiliate) so we are no where near the dominant player for our key terms which I guess makes this sort of move even more risky.
EGOL – when you say you would go after the .com – do you mean for the purpose of blocking competition using it (ie: buy it to redirect to .co.uk) or would it make a difference to the argument for moving to a different domain if it was the .com instead of the .org?
So I guess the other question is if you guys think it is too risky to move the domain – do you think it is ok to build a multi language site on the .co.uk in directories or would it be better to try and buy all the country specific domains .es .de .fr etc.. (ideally wanted to keep it all under one domain as there will be shared forums and shared member backend and tracking all happening but will consider all options.)
-
I agree that there is more risk moving an older site than a newer site.
If you lost 10% of a little it would not be much... but if you lost 10% of a lot then that would be disappointing.
-
Hi Adrian,
Since your site is an established and indexed for 7 years property, I would not move it since
1- The links are actually pointing at your .co.uk domain and that won't change even with proper redirection.
2- People must probably knows this URL in some proportion
3- Your domain has build a trust from search engines that I would not play with to start from a new one.
Maybe someone would think different, but I prefer building a new site with new content or new content to my site then to risk it's futur.
-
If you redirect you will probably lose a small amount of linkjuice and possibly some anchor text value.
Do you have your closest competitors soundly beaten?
If you are clearly the dominant site in your niche then your risk of loss is lower but still possible.
(I would go after that .com.... I would be willing to pay quite a bit for it)
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
-
Bing is not Indexing my site.
Hi, My website is four months old and has more than 8000 pages. Bing has indexed only 8 pages till date and Google also keeps playing hide and seek with it. There was a time when google indexed almost all the pages of my site but now there are only 5000 pages indexed. Moreover when I check my site on google (by typing site:socktail.com), it shows only 26 pages. Please let me know what should I do. If somebody wants to take a look, my website is http://socktail.com Thanks
Technical SEO | | saurabh19050 -
Site Redesign: 302 Query
Hi there, We'll be redesigning our website www.example.com and as such want to 302 users from www.example.com and all other pages to a new URL www.example.com/landingpage while we go through the redesign. The new landing page will have copy and a sign up form on it and once the redesign is completed, we plan on removing the 302 and sending all traffic back to the original url www.example.com. I'd just like to check that a 302 is the most relevant option here? Obviously, once redesign is completed we'll 301 any old URLs to their new locations once completed.
Technical SEO | | Hemblem0 -
Friendly URLs for MultiLingual Site
Hi, We have a multilingual website with both latin and non-latin characters, We are working on creating a friendly URL structure for the site. For the Latin languages can we use translated version of the URLs within the language folders? For example - www.site/cars www.site/fr/voitures www.site/es/autos
Technical SEO | | theLotter0 -
Help optimising this site
Hi I have been optimising this site http://seakayakdevon.co.uk/ which is a wordpress site since making changes to it recently the site is now indexed and appearing among its competitors. trouble is they still are placed higher rn the SE rankings. i wish to optimise for local search i.e on Google places etc. but the trouble is there is'nt a physical address for the business it is run from various coastal locations. any ideas how i can still market for local search- maps etc. I have done the following optimisation: sitemaps title tag, description tag improved content removed duplicate content an blocker pages replace image text and replaced with header tag improved page names - making them static any advice of guidance would be greatly appreciated- will the fatc its built in wordpress limit its ability to gain better ranking in the SE? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Bristolweb0 -
How is this site doing this?
http://www.meccabingo.com It shows a splash / promotion page yet you check the cache and it's the real homepage, they are doing this so they don't lose rankings but how are they redirecting users to that but Google is caching the real homepage? is it friendly? thanks!!
Technical SEO | | AdiRste0 -
Are site wide links bad for web developers?
Like many web dev companies, we put an anchor text credit (varying the anchor text) in the footer of clients' sites. As it's a footer link, it's site wide. This strategy's been troubling me for a while and I've been anticipating a drop in our rankings ... especially in light of Penguin. But it hasn't happened. Any other developers our there taken a hit by having site wide links? anyone have any views on this? Anyone want to comment on the spurious and unlikely scenario that Google may recognise that web dev companies have always used site wide credits and may therefore be overlooking / not penalising them?
Technical SEO | | 2Stroke0 -
Keyword ranking not moving
Hello, We have a very important keyword for our website (www.decorplanet.com) that hasn't moved in any direction in over a year. The keyword is "bathroom vanities". Our current SEO company has told us that the previous company has "over- optimized/linked" for this particular keyword and now Google is penalizing us for this. They told us that we need to leave it alone for a while and concentrate on other keywords and this one should naturally come back up (I should mention that at some point, we were much higher than where we are right now for that particular keyword). Many of our other high-profile keywords have been moving nicely to the first page. Keywords like "modern bathroom vanities", "antique bathroom vanities", "contemporary bathroom vanities", but the one that we really want ("bathroom vanities") hasn't budged at all. Does anyone have any thoughts on this. Is it possible that Google put us in some sort of a "sand-box" - I mean we are on page 2 so it doesn't sound like that's the case. It's just very bizarre that we can't seem to do anything with this keyword. Really appreciate any thoughts or input on this.
Technical SEO | | steven11330 -
No Following Existing Non-SEO Pages A Good Idea?
Greetings! Is there an advantage in no-following links to pages like "Terms Of Use" and "Privacy Policy"... pages one isn't trying to rank for? Of course, the idea would be to not waste link juice on unimportant pages. Your thoughts? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | 945010