Changing domains from .net to .com after 7 month of traffic loss.
-
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!
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
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
-
Technical : Duplicate content and domain name change
Hi guys, So, this is a tricky one. My server team just made quite a big mistake :We are a big We are a big magento ecommerce website, selling well, with about 6000 products. And we are about to change our domaine name for administrative reasons. Let's call the current site : current.com and the future one : future.com Right, here is the issue Connecting to the search console, I saw future.com sending 11.000 links to current.com. At the same time DA was hit by 7 points. I realized future.com was uncorrectly redirected and showed a duplicated site or current.com. We corrected this, and future.com now shows a landing page until we make the domain name change. I was wondering what is the best way to avoid the penalty now and what can be the consequences when changing domain name. Should I set an alias on search console or something ? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Kepass0 -
Steps to Improve Page Rank and Domain Authority
Hi If the quality of web pages is very good I believe rankings should reflect this. My domain is at least 3 years old.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SEOguy1
What steps would you recommend short term and long term in terms of how to improve page rank and domain authority? Thanks.0 -
Change domains and start over?
We have a fairly new client who has taken part in many questionable SEO technique over the past few years (mainly buying links and directory web pages). In an effort to fix this they hired three separate SEO’s – we are the fourth. Over the past 3 months we have spent lots of time following best practice techniques to clean up and improve their rankings (including link removal requests but not yet disavow), and after some initially positive results, things are looking down again. Given Google’s apparent rolling algorithm updates and the mess we have found, we are wondering if the best option is to change domains and start over (downside is that they are in a highly competitive industry)? My other question pertains to a domain change and if we were to change from a plural to a singular, would that be enough for Google? (e.g from www.domains.com to www.domain.com). The idea is that we start the link building process again – but keep their brand intact. Really appreciate any feedback.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | E2E0 -
By changing the wordpress theme what need to take for seo consideration?
Hi guys! we have a site that been using a theme for a year now and we decided to change to a new one, the question here is, does it affect seo? or it is possible to remain 100% for the seo? What caution tips that you guys can share for changing the theme? Does just remaining the same URL works?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | andrewwatson922 -
Whay are low-quality exact match domains still ranking well for our biggest term?
There are a number of low-quality “exact-match” domains that are ranking well for the term “locum tenens”. I don’t want to specifically mention any sites, but there are some with poor content and very few quality backlinks that are on page one. The only reason I can see for them ranking so well is the fact that “locum” and/or “tenens” are in the URL. It’s very frustrating because we have worked hard to do all the right things (regular blogging, high-quality content, quality backlinks, etc.) to build our domain authority and page authority so they are better than these sites, yet they still out-rank us. Our site is www.bartonassociates.com. Could it have something to do with the term “locum tenens”, which is a latin phrase? Is it possible that because it is a latin term that it somehow slipped through the cracks and avoided the update that was supposed to eliminate this? If so, what can we do to get some justice?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ba_seomoz0 -
Should you include keywords in your domain name to rank well on Google Places?
Is it okay to include keywords in your domain name (as well as business name) to rank well on Google Places? In my opinion, this is very spammy and the sites using this technique will be slapped by Google sooner or later.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | thegoatman1 -
So what's up with UpDowner.com?
I've noticed these guys in link profiles for several sites I manage. They'll usually show up around 1,000-10,000 times in the backlink profile. From what I can tell they index websites, build up keyword relationships, and then when you search for something on their site (e.g. poker) they'll present a list of related sites with stats about them. The stats seem to be yanked straight from Alexa. Where the backlink comes from is that every time 'your' site shows up for a search result they'll put a little iframe that contains your site. This means if your site's name/keywords are pretty broad, you could be showing up thousands and tens of thousands of times as being linked from these guys on their pages that Google indexes. And Google indexes, boy do they ever. At the height, they had over 53 million pages indexed. That has apparently shrunk now to around 25 million. I believe their strategy is to generate a crap-load of automated content in the hopes they can cash in on obscure long tails. So my questions for you guys are: Are you seeing them in your backlinks too? Should I block their spider/referrers? What is their deal man?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | icecarats0 -
Is domain name or page title "safe" as anchor text?
I am aware of the dangers of excessively optimized anchor text I have seen some suggestions that as long as your anchor text is either the URL or the page title that this will be OK, no matter how many links come in with that anchor text. Does anyone have an opinion, or even any hard data on this? Thx Paul
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | diogenes0