Changing domains from .net to .com after 7 month of traffic loss.
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We are in business since 2005 and we always used the .net version as it was the only one available when we started. In about 2007 we bought the .com version to the person who owned it but we kept using the .net as customers were already used to that version.
In January we started to see a SE traffic loss, not to mention being outranked by several sites (95% of those site spammers). We had no manual penalty but it could be an algorithmic, we are not sure if we even have some sort of penalty or is just that our niche is too spammed.
We are now considering moving the site to the .com version as all our tries of increasing and regaining our ranks were useless (backlink cleanup, disavow tool usage, excellent link building, excellent content creation and social interactions). Our DA and PA are both higher that any of the other ages ranking on top. We have about 3k pages indexed.
What do you guys think? Should we move the site to the .com? (note that the change is ranking-wise, not in terms of branding).
And if we do, should we 301 all pages? or rel=canonical to avoid a possible "penalty flow" to the other domain?
Note: for years, the .com version was/is 301 to the .net one.
Thank you all!
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Hello Federico,
There are enough tag pages still indexed that I'd go ahead and remove that entire directory in Google Webmaster Tools. You may consider a noindex tag on archive pages as well.
In regard to your original question, I don't think it would necessarily remove an algorithmic penalty, but it would be good for your brand in the long run. If you're going to do a change like that you might as well do it while traffic is low anyway.
Yes, 301 redirect the .net site to the .com site on a page-by-page basis.
I would also look into creating a few more useful non-blog pages on the site. Some type of innovative resource that advertisers and/or publishers would find super useful would help you build up the authority of the main site, which would be important considering how relatively few pages and links you have there compared to the blog. An inforgraphic wouldn't cut the mustard, but I'm sure you can come up with something since it is a very well-done site visually.
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There's been a lot of chatter about changing domains when there's no manual penalty and some claim it worked pretty well.
All tag pages are set to noindex, so if some are still showing that's because Google hasn't removed them yet or even still indexing them. It isn't a wordpress theme either, it is an in-house designed and programmed website, including the blog.
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Hi,
if you were doing 301 redirect (permanent) from the COm to the NET, don't change that. According to me, it will not change anything.
I have quickly checked your website and sure, you have a lot of pages indexed but it's 70% of Wordpress Tag pages; useless pages.
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