Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thanks both for your responses.

Although we enjoy good rankings and good traffic levels we are in one of the most competitive (SEO wise) sector (Gambling Affiliate) so we are no where near the dominant player for our key terms which I guess makes this sort of move even more risky.

EGOL – when you say you would go after the .com – do you mean for the purpose of blocking competition using it (ie: buy it to redirect to .co.uk) or would it make a difference to the argument for moving to a different domain if it was the .com instead of the .org?

So I guess the other question is if you guys think it is too risky to move the domain – do you think it is ok to build a multi language site on the .co.uk in directories or would it be better to try and buy all the country specific domains .es .de .fr etc.. (ideally wanted to keep it all under one domain as there will be shared forums and shared member backend and tracking all happening but will consider all options.)

I am currently considering moving our site from the current .co.uk domain to the .org version which we also own.

The site is established and indexed for 7 years, ranks well and has circa 10k traffic per month which is mainly UK & US traffic.

The reason for the change to the .org domain is to make the site more global facing and give us the opportunity to develop the site into multi language within directories (.org/es/ etc.) and then target those to the local search engines. For the kind of site it is (community based) it wouldn’t really work to split this into lots of separate country targeted domains.

So the choice is to either stick with the .co.uk and add the other foreign language specific content in directories within the .co.uk or move to the .org and do the same (there is also a potential third option of purchasing the .com which is currently unused but that could be pricey!)

We are also planning a big overhaul of the site with redesign, lots of added content and reorganisation of the site – but are thinking that it would be better to move the domain on a 1:1 basis first with the current design, content and URL structure in place and then do the other changes 2 or 3 months down the line.

I have read up on SEOmoz, google guidelines etc on moving a site to a new domain and understand the theoretical approach of moving the site and the steps to take (1to1 301 redirects, sitemaps on old and new etc) and I will retain ownership of the .co.uk so the redirects can remain in place indefinitely.

However having worked so hard to get the site to where it is in the search engines and traffic levels I am very worried about whether the domain change is a good move. I am more than happy to accept a temporary fluctuation in rankings & traffic for 1 – 4 weeks as reported may happen as long as I can be sure it will return after a temporary period and be as strong (or almost as strong) as the previous rankings / traffic.

Looking for peoples experiences to give me the confidence / reassurance to go ahead with this or any info on why I shouldn’t

Thanks in advance for your advice.

Adrian.

Thanks Istvan and Alan for the responses.

On the subject of incoming links - I can change internal links and inbound links from other sites I control however the vast majority of links will still point to the old page location so my follow up question is just how serious is this link juice loss due to the 301 and is this a serious enough reason to not do the change and keep the locations as they are now?

I am looking at changing the platform of an established (7 years) site to PHP based.

Currently most of the URLs have the file extension .htm (“x.com/filename.htm” ) with some URLs being indexed as directory URLs (“x.com/directory/” feeding from “x.com/directory/index.htm”)

So I am considering two options

• A. Changing just file extensions & create 301 redirects, (x.com/samefilename.htm” -> “x.com/samefilename.php”) and for directory URLs (“x.com/samedirectory/index.htm” -> “x.com/samedirectory/index.php”)

• B. At the same time taking the opportunity to change the file hierarchy to be more user / seo friendly by changing all URLs to directory URLs – this would be a more extensive redirect than just changing the file extension.

I am interested in what risks / impact would there be of this and the questions I would like some help with are:

1. Are there any short term risks to rankings with a filename extension change like this?
2. Should an exercise like this be staggered or is it ok to carry out the site-wide change in one go?
3. Does a more extensive filename and structure redirect like in option B above introduce more risk than just changing to the .php extension or would the search engines consider this the same?
4. For the directory URLs do I even need a 301 redirect after changing index.htm to index.php or will the Search engines not even recognise a change (indexed URL will remain the same)?

Your opinions on the above questions and any other advice / experience you can share would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Adrian.