EMD.net or PMD.com?
-
I've had a successful online business for the past 8 years, and my website was consistently on the front page of Google for 5 of the years, almost all of my longtail (that's an old term huh?) keywords as well as my top choice, vanity keywords. However, with the last update and Google's brand push, I've gotten beaten up pretty badly, falling to 3rd, 4th and 5th page results. Maybe I could have saved them (disavow some links, improve speed) but I had a really happy and horrific event in my life, the birth of my first child. Happy because I've wanted a family since I was 13, horrific because she's been ill, and it's only my wife and I taking care of her. I literally haven't been back to sit in front of my computer for the past 3 months except to do quick searches on medicines, treatments, etc.
So now that I have some freedom to get back to work, and our major selling season is over (with a massive drop in sales) I'm considering on re-branding with a new url (our reputation suffered a lot too, late shipments, long customer service waits). The current url is a partial match domain relative to the two categories of products I sell - thisproductandthatproduct.com. However, one of these categories of products I want to drop because that side of the business no longer represents a profitable market, but I want to keep selling the other category of product.
I own productname.net and and old fashion iproductname.com. I know that it's possible to rank .net's but since I'm in the online retail field, .com's usually have more success. The iproductname.com I think I can brand successfully, but the i in the domain name makes it kind of cliche and old fashioned. The Exact Match Domain .net is really, REALLY tempting, because it represents a search that is done about 250k per month. But, it's a .net, and might be more of a struggle since Google seems to be cracking down on EMD's, which sucks because my site is not a content or affiliate traffic site, but a retail source.
And, that's not the end of my predicament. Do I start from scratch, or redirect. The current url is ten years old, with about a PR4 according to seobook's browser tool. It's still within the first 100 results, which might or might not mean it still has some authority. I was thinking about redirecting the category pages to the new url and keeping the old one as an informational page for old customers, with a link to the new site, then redirecting later on.
Any suggestions would be really helpful.
-
I like the idea of 301 redirecting to a new URL, especially if you are planning to drop one of the products. I think that the domains are a tossup. From my experience, EMD are still very effective in many verticals.
I agree that you should look into possible causes for the penalty. Try the Panguin Tool (http://www.barracuda-digital.co.uk/panguin-tool/) to see if your traffic drop aligns with a specific penalty. Did you receive any Unnatural Link Warnings in your Google Webmaster Tools? (if yes read this http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/06/backlinks-and-reconsideration-requests.html) If you know that you have some questionable links, try to have them removed or consider the Disavow Tool.
-
I would normally do exactly as you suggest, however, like I said, the original url also represents a category of business I don't wan't to be in anymore, so I could stop selling that product, but to have a url that references a product I don't sell anymore seems counter productive.
-
Without seeing the site here are my suggestions.
Keep the current url and build the business back up. Send the time and figure out why your site has dropped in the rankings, it could have been any one of dozens of reasons.
Then I would also send out emails to the people that you were slow with or provided bad customer service to. Explain the situation that caused you to be slow, apologize, and give them a coupon. If you have a lot of bad reviews from this period I would enact a plan maybe using rafflecopter or something similar to wipe the reviews away.
Since you have a busy season, I would spend the whole off season trying to get things back in order with the site for when the next busy season comes.
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
-
.com or other TLD?
Hi, We are in the process of considering our domain url options for a new site. The plan is to migrate other site (bringing their link juice) to an main brand level domain. At the moment our desired .com url is unattainable however from a band perspective another extension e.g (.group) would probably be a better brand fit - however I wanted to know what the implications might be from an SEO perspective. At the moment some of our sub domains are ranking extremely well for desired keywords. Assuming we implement the correct redirect rules to maintain these rankings, would there be any other implication for our rankings (particularly in the UK and US) for not using a .com domain and using an alternatve TLD extension. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | carlsutherland0 -
Wix.com ...what if any issues are there with this platform and SEO?
I have a client that would like me to support them with SEO on a Wix.com site. I was hoping to get some feedback from the community to see if there were people who had experience int he following areas: Supporting the day to day operation of a WiX site? Specifically are there any issues I need to watch out for or be aware of if I choose to support this site? From and SEO perspective is this platform OK or are there some issues I need to be made aware of? I would sincerely appreciate any input or comments on this platform.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ron_McCabe0 -
.net has replaced our .com rankings - what the heck?
We have a www.domain.net that domain forwards to www.domain.com. About 5 days ago, when searching for our brand term, I noticed that www.domain.net took the top position, and most of our www.domain.com rankings have dropped. The www.domain.net is set to forward to www.domain.com. Any ideas what could cause something like this to happen?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | crapshoot0 -
Changing from .net TLD to .com TLD
I have a Fortune 50 serving client that has for a few years been operating their site on a .net domain since the .com was not available. They have just aquired the .com domain for their company name that was unavailable before. However, it was not a transfer of a live domain. In whois it is showing as brand new and "unseasoned" For now I have recommended that they just perm forward the .com to the .net and leave the .net as the TLD But I am sure they want to in the future make the switch. What would my best course of action be as the SEO consultant?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tjkirgin0 -
Making sense of MLB.com domain structure
Although the subject of subdomains has been discussed quite often on these boards, I never found a clear answer to something I am pondering. I am about to launch a network of 8 to 10 related sites - all sharing a the same concept, layout, etc. but each site possessing unique content. My concept will be somewhat similar to how MLB.com (Major League Baseball) is set up. Each of the 30 teams in the league has it's unique content as a subdomain. My goal in the initial research was to try to find the answer to this question - **"Do the subdomains of a network contribute any increased value to the Root Domain? ** As I was trying to find the answer to my question and analyzing how MLB.com did it, I began to notice some structure that made very little sense to me and am hoping an expert can explain why they are doing it the way they are. Let me try to illustrate: Root Domain = http://mlb.com (actually redirects to: http://mlb.mlb.com/index.jsp) This root domain serves universal content that appeals to all fans of the league and also as a portal to the other subdomains from the main navigation. SubDomain Example = http://tampabay.rays.mlb.com/index.jsp **Already there are a couple of questions. ** 1. Why does MLB.com redirect to http://mlb.mlb.com/index.jsp ? - why the mlb subdomain? 2. - Why two subdomains for tampabay.rays.mlb.com/index.jsp.? Why not just make the subdomain "tampabayrays", "newyorkmets", "newyorkyankees" etc. **Here is where things get a little more complicated and confusing for me. **
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bluelynxmarketing
From the home page, if I click on an article about the San Francisco Giants, I was half expecting to be led to content hosted from the http://sanfrancisco.giants.mlb subdomain but instead the URL was: http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20121030&content_id=40129938&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb I can understand the breakdown of this URL
YMD = Year, Month, Date
Content ID = Identifying the content
VKey = news_MLB (clicked from the "news section found from the mlb subdomain.
c_id=mlb (?) Now, if I go to the San Francisco Giants page, I see a link to the same exact article but the URL is this: http://sanfrancisco.giants.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20121030&content_id=40129938&vkey=news_sf&c_id=sf It get's even stranger...when I went to the Chicago Cubs subdomain, the URL to the same exact article does not even link to the general mlb.mlb.com content, instead the URL looks like this: http://chicago.cubs.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20121030&content_id=40129938&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb When I looked at the header from the http://chicago.cubs.mlb.com ULR, I could see the OG:URL as: http://sanfrancisco.giants.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20121030&content_id=40129938&vkey=news_sf&c_id=sf but I did not see anything relating to rel=canonical I am sure there is a logical answer to this as the content management for a site like MLB.COM must be a real challenge. However, it seems that they would have some major issues with duplicate content. So aside from MLB's complex structure...I am also still searching for the answer to my initial question which is - **"Do the subdomains of a network contribute any increased value to the Root Domain?" For example, does http://tampabay.rays.mlb.com/index.jsp bring value to http://mlb.com? And what if the subdomain is marketed as http://raysbaseball.com and then redirected to the subdomain? Thanks in advance. **0 -
Changing a url from .html to .com
Hello, I have a client that has a site with a .html plugin and I have read that its best to not have this. We currently have pages ranking with this .html plug in. However If we take the plug in out will we lose rankings? would we need a 301 or something?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0 -
Looking for an opinion on Buildmyrank.com
I am looking to sign up for 20-50 links per month. Does anyone have an opinion negatively or positively on this service? Thanks in advance for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | newcitymoving0 -
Any tips for moving my blog from blogspot.com to a domain I already own?
I own a blog that's getting popular, http://iworktemplates.blogspot.com, and I have many good linking domains pointing to it namely, apple.com/iwork/resources. I wondered if anyone had any tips on how I could move this without loosing that tremendous link juice?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JoelWolfgang0