Is it worth switching from .net to .com if you own both domain names
-
For over 20 years the company I work for has used www.company.net as their TLD, because we could not register www.company.com at that time. However, currently we also own www.company.com
www.company.com has a 301 re-direct to www.company.net We are a global company, and market leader in our industry. Our company name is associated with the product we make, and our competitors use our company name as their targeted keywords to attract visitors to their sites because our company name is synonym with the product we and they make.
As we are a global company we also have lots of TLDcc's. The email address of all our employees worldwide have a .net email address extension.
Would you advice switching from www.company.net to www.company.com??? And if so, what would be the reasons for this switch. Would it only be for branding purposes?
Looking forward to some insights before taking on such an invasive switch (because of the switch of all email addresses of employees worldwide).
Best regards,
Astrid Groeneveld
-
Astrid,
David is right; you will put almost the entire backlinks' profile of .net at risk. The quantum of the risk and the subsequent results are factors that nobody would be able to predict with perfection.
-
Hi Astrid,
It could be argued that .com domains correlate better with higher rankings that .net domains, however there is no certainty as to whether the search engines use this domain distinction as a ranking factor (and if so, how much weight it holds in their overall algorithm)
It could also be argued that a .com domain carries more trust from a brand perspective, so there is an overall marketing case to be put forward for switching.
However...
From an SEO point of view, any potential benefit you'd receive from switching to a .com (which in my opinion would be very little) would be counter-acted (and possible outweighed) by the link juice you'd lose from 301'ing your existing domain and all the links it's received over the years. There is no exact figure on what kind of link power you'd lose, but have a read on the test on losing link juice from a 301 redirect.
So as an SEO excercise, I would say you'll receive very little benefit from switching, and more likely you would see rankings drop in the short-medium term. It could be a different story from a marketing perspective, but whoever is making the decision should be aware of the SEO consequences.
Thanks
David
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
-
Found a cache of old domain names, should I link or 301 redirect
We have found a cache of about 10 URLs, some are ranking above our main URL in Google SERPS. What is the best course of action here? a. Redirect all to the homepage?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moconn
b. Link all domains to the homepage?
c. Link all domains to select pages on on main site, being careful not to anchor text spam
d. 301 redirect all to the main site. Is there any disadvantage to your recommendation? Is there likely to be a penalty incurred? I feel like we'll get the strongest increase in rankings by following option c but it feels like option d may be safer. Thanks in advance for your help!0 -
Domain Name
Hello everyone Please advice what to do in a situation when searching for a domain: www.domain.com google is recommending domain.org ? when these are completely 2 different sites? Does it has to do with trust rank? Please advice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FusionMediaLimited0 -
Domain name suffix impact on SEO
Hello there, We are about to launch a new website and were wondering what impact a specific suffix would have from an SEO point of view. We were thinking about going for a domain which ends in .london as oppose to .com We are based in London and sell world wide via our website. We are suggesting www.domain.london as oppose to www.domain.com I would appreciate your views... Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | roberthseo0 -
Is there a way to increase domain authority?
Dear all, when I see moz analytics for my blog irctcloginindia.co.in, it is legging behind only in terms of diomain authority when compared to my competitors. Because of which it is ranking low. Is there any short cut or fast method using which I can increase the authority for my domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | irctclogin0 -
Combine .com and .co.uk domain? So forward .co.uk to .com for SEO?
Hello, A new client of mine has an .com and an .co.uk domain. Both the same content (and they don't have the capacity to make specific content on both domains). I am thinking building al domain authority to 1 domain. In this case the .com domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Seeders
And forward the .co.uk to this .com domain.
In this way, the .com will rank in both UK as in other English speaking countries, right? Or not?
Or should I use the rel="alternate" hreflang="x" tag? I am not sure. But I do know big brands rank high in the Netherlands with .com domains (for example booking.com). Looking forward on feedback on best practices here... Thanks!0 -
Content Transfer for Penguin Induced Domain Switch
One of my customers has a mature site that performs very well in ranking and traffic for major keywords, prosun.com. A few years ago we started welproma.com because they were changing their name and branding. We built up welproma.com as an eventual replacement and ramped up to 30% of the Prosun.com traffic. Penguin hit a bit in 2012 but very bad May 24, 2013 and it keeps getting worse. Now they are backing out of the name change, reverting back to prosun.com as the main website. Unfortunately the Welproma.com content is far better in quantity and quality so we would prefer not to waste it. Does anyone think it is a problem to take essentially the exact content from the newer, penalized site and move it to the older well performing site. We will use no links whatsoever between the two sites and take down the new one once we switch.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | phogan0 -
Meta canonical or simply robots.txt other domain names with same content?
Hi, I'm working with a new client who has a main product website. This client has representatives who also sells the same products but all those reps have a copy of the same website on another domain name. The best thing would probably be to shut down the other (same) websites and redirect 301 them to the main, but that's impossible in the minding of the client. First choice : Implement a conical meta for all the URL on all the other domain names. Second choice : Robots.txt with disallow for all the other websites. Third choice : I'm really open to other suggestions 😉 Thank you very much! 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Louis-Philippe_Dea0