.co.uk to .com - Transfer of domain
-
After having our site up for over a year and gaining PR 3 and more than a dozen page 1 rankings on Google for most of our competitive terms, we have realised we have to transfer to .com from our current .co.uk URL for legal reasons.
What would the best way be to carry out such a move in an SEO perspective?
-
Mmm... it is not the webmaster that does the 301... it is your server that does it.
I mean:
- the inbound link send to your old url page
- search engines bot (and users) follow that link and arrive to your site
- your server sees that a visit is directed to the old url
- the server then apply the rule you gave him via .htaccess (for instance) and redirect the visit to the new url of the page
In this "transfer" a little bit of pagerank seems getting lost, that is why is alway better to ask to the owner of the site where the backlink is to update the link itself, if possible.
-
How can we 301 the inbound links to our site, if the links are from other sites ? Supposing, the webmaster has placed our link oh his site. Should we ask the webmaster of the site to do this as he has the ftp details only.
-
Read this Google webmaster help: https://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=83105&hl=en
That page explains very easily what to do, but you can sum it with
- 301 old urls to new site urls;
- control the inbound links and eventually ask to change the URL in the link to the new page. If not possible, the 301 will redirect the visits from that link to the new page, but will loose a little bit of PR;
- use the Webmaster Tools > Change of address function to alert Google of the change of address;
- Add the new site in Google Webmaster Tool
- Notify Google with a sitemap of the new site
There will be a period where Google will crawl both the old and the new site... but I believe that you will have to block Google from indexing the old one due to the legal issue you told. That can be done via robots.txt and noindex, nofollow in the meta robots
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
-
Nice Domain Authority but Not Ranking
Hi, A client of mine who owns a website reached out to me. He got penalized a while ago and has long since recovered (not sure exactly, but for sure a year). His domain authority is in the upper 30s but is still not ranking for many of his keywords that he ranked on the first page. I am not so familiar with the technical aspects of penalties and such, but is this a common scenario? Why is his domain authority great but his ranking downright awful? Does he have a chance if he builds great links, or is something else wrong that we can't figure out?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rachel_J0 -
How best to handle partial domain move?
The scenario is this, we have a website eg: ABC.com where the content is in two language folders (en-us and en-gb). We have created a new brand with website XYZ.com for the USA market. Of course, this domain will take a while to rank because it is completely fresh. My question is how best to deactivate the en-us content on the old site to: a) prevent it showing up on Google US
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | esseljay
and
b) pass the US traffic to the new website to boost its rankings I was thinking of removing the en-us pages from ABC.com and using a 410 error page containing a link to XYZ.com
Would it be better to replace the content on en-us instead (with a link)? I'm not keen to use a straight 301 redirect as sometimes we get traffic from other countries to the en-us content. Thanks in advance Mozzers 🙂0 -
How to rank my website in Google UK?
Hi guys, I own a London based rubbish removal company, but don't have enough jobs. I know for sure that some of my competitors get most of their jobs trough Google searches. I also have a website, but don't receive calls from it at all. Can you please tell me how to rank my website on keywords like: "rubbish removal london", "waste clearance london", "junk collection london" and other similar keywords? I know that for person like me (without much experience in online marketing) will be difficult task to optimize the website, but at least - I need some advices from where to start. I'm also thinking to hire an SEO but not sure where to find a trusted company. Most importantly I have no idea how much should pay to expect good results? What is too much and what is too low? I will appreciate all advices.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gorubbishgo0 -
Link from Google.com
Hi guys I've just seen a website get a link from Google's Webmaster Snippet testing tool. Basically, they've linked to a results page for their own website test. Here's an example of what this would look like for a result on my website. http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.impression.co.uk There's a meta nofollow, but I just wondered what everyone's take is on Trust, etc, passing down? (Don't worry, I'm not encouraging people to go out spamming links to results pages!) Looking forward to some interesting responses!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tomcraig860 -
Are links safe from friendsite.com?
I have just checked my backlinks in Majestic and was shocked. It appears I've gained 1500 back links in 1 day all from the domains friendsite.com. I checked a few of the links and the links to my site have disappeared. Looking at friendsite.com, it seems that peopel can bookmark a site, and when they do it appears on the "latest bookmerk" section which is site wide. So my concern is that: 1500 links have appeared in one day from one domain 1500 links disappeared the next day Wouldnt both of these cause Google to get suspicious? What should I do? Should I ask friendsite.com to remove the links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters1 -
Best domain extension is .com or .net for SEO ?
Best domain extension is .com or .net for SEO ? I wanna make site ,in that business directory ,travel guides , Hotels many more . I wanna target a one kw local search about 1,000,000 per month .domain name ofthat keyword already has taken by some one but .net remaining plz advice me to proceed .
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innofidelity0 -
Affects of vanity domains?
Hi there! My client's domain name is his name, let's say (www,myname.com) because he is well-known in his industry. He is a physician with a very specific specialty and organic competition is fierce for the most relevant keyword to his specialty. A domain has just become available that includes the keyword. If we bought the domain, how could we use it to our advantage? I'm confused about redirecting, etc., with this type of situation. Am i making any sense here? Help! Thanks. 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mills0 -
Penalty for using expired domain?
I was wondering if anyone has any experience using dropped/expired domains with old "clean" backlinks for new sites. Is there be a penalty for doing this (with good intent)? Worth a reconsideration request?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EdgySEO0