What to do with .net version of our domain name?

[kinsana]

We recently bought the .net version of our domain name. Our plans are to use it for blogging and link to our .com site through it. Is this a good or bad idea? Why or why not?  Is there a better use for the .net site?

[DeptAgency]

Hi Kinsana,

It's almost always a good idea to start a blog! The more (quality) content you have, the better you will rank. However, I would reconsider your idea for two reasons:

1. First of all, you generally want to concentrate the value of your entire website on one domain. This way your current website will all benefit from the SEO value you build with your blog. I'd therefore put the blog in a subfolder (www.example.com/blog/).
2. I image it could be rather confusing for visitors to have two seperate websites for one company with exactly the same url (apart from the .net/.com obviously). Imagine a visitor landed on your blog via google and returns to your website the next day by typing your adress in the browser. The autocomplete function will send him to the .net version (based on history) and the visitor might not understand why your website seems to be nothing but a blog. If you are going to use two domains, at least make sure it's clear that one is a blog and the other one isn't.

Personally I agree with Adam, just redirect the .net to your .com and place your Blog elsewhere.

Best of luck!

Sven Witteveen
Expand Online

[tolik1]

1. 301 redirect your .net to your.com.

2. Place your corporate blog in a folder (www.domain.com/blog) and not on a sub-domain (blog.domain.com) - this way you're blog will take advantage of the domain's authority.

As for linking back - you can do it this way too. PR transfers withing the domain too

[RyanKent]

I would recommend against using it for your company's main blog. Adding a quality blog to your main site is a very helpful way to improve your site. A blog should contain fresh content which is relevant both to your site and recent events. It is a way to bring in fresh traffic. Adding a blog to your main site will help increase the Domain Authority of your main site.

If you split your blog by adding it to another URL, a few challenges are created. First, you lose the advantages mentioned above. Secondly, you are linking from one site you control to another site you control which is not the type of link which Google values.

Otherwise simply redirecting your .net to your .com would be the current best practice.

It is a good idea to control the .net version of your site to better control your brand name. Depending on your hosting set up, you could use it to serve images or other content in parallel. I am not up on the latest site optimization techniques in that regard. Otherwise there is not much additional value owning the .net site offers.

[blu42media]

I agree with Adam.  301 redirect the .net to your .com so you keep your link juice on your main site.

Many people use the .net versions as a safeguard to prevent competitors from using the namespace in the SERPs, especially on competitive keywords.

[AdamThompson]

That's an OK idea. Personally, I would 301 the .net to your main domain and blog on your main domain. I'd rather have all your link juice pointed at the one domain.