Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Is it worth switching from .net to .com if you own both domain names
-
For over 20 years the company I work for has used www.company.net as their TLD, because we could not register www.company.com at that time. However, currently we also own www.company.com
www.company.com has a 301 re-direct to www.company.net We are a global company, and market leader in our industry. Our company name is associated with the product we make, and our competitors use our company name as their targeted keywords to attract visitors to their sites because our company name is synonym with the product we and they make.
As we are a global company we also have lots of TLDcc's. The email address of all our employees worldwide have a .net email address extension.
Would you advice switching from www.company.net to www.company.com??? And if so, what would be the reasons for this switch. Would it only be for branding purposes?
Looking forward to some insights before taking on such an invasive switch (because of the switch of all email addresses of employees worldwide).
Best regards,
Astrid Groeneveld
-
Astrid,
David is right; you will put almost the entire backlinks' profile of .net at risk. The quantum of the risk and the subsequent results are factors that nobody would be able to predict with perfection.
-
Hi Astrid,
It could be argued that .com domains correlate better with higher rankings that .net domains, however there is no certainty as to whether the search engines use this domain distinction as a ranking factor (and if so, how much weight it holds in their overall algorithm)
It could also be argued that a .com domain carries more trust from a brand perspective, so there is an overall marketing case to be put forward for switching.
However...
From an SEO point of view, any potential benefit you'd receive from switching to a .com (which in my opinion would be very little) would be counter-acted (and possible outweighed) by the link juice you'd lose from 301'ing your existing domain and all the links it's received over the years. There is no exact figure on what kind of link power you'd lose, but have a read on the test on losing link juice from a 301 redirect.
So as an SEO excercise, I would say you'll receive very little benefit from switching, and more likely you would see rankings drop in the short-medium term. It could be a different story from a marketing perspective, but whoever is making the decision should be aware of the SEO consequences.
Thanks
David
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
-
Sub Domain Usage
I see that the gap uses gap.com, oldnavy.gap.com and bananarepublic.gap.com. Wouldn't a better approach for SEO to have oldnavy.com, bananarepublic.com and gap.com all separate? Is there any benefit to using the approach of store1.parentcompany.com, store2.parentcompany.com etc? What are the pros and cons to each?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kcb81780 -
When i search for my domain name - google asks "did you mean" - why?
Hi all, I just noticed something quite odd - if i do a search for my domain name (see: http://goo.gl/LBc1lz) google shows my domain as first result, but it also asks "did i mean" and names another website with very similar name. the other site has far lower PA/DA according to Moz, any ideas why google is doing this? and more inportantly how i could stop it? please advise James
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | isntworkdull0 -
Microsites: Subdomain vs own domains
I am working on a travel site about a specific region, which includes information about lots of different topics, such as weddings, surfing etc. I was wondering whether its a good idea to register domains for each topic since it would enable me to build backlinks. I would basically keep the design more or less the same and implement a nofollow navigation bar to each microsite. e.g.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kinimod
weddingsbarcelona.com
surfingbarcelona.com or should I rather go with one domain and subfolders: barcelona.com/weddings
barcelona.com/surfing I guess the second option is how I would usually do it but I just wanted to see what are the pros/cons of both options. Many thanks!0 -
Community inside the domain or in a separate domain
Hi there, I work for an ecommerce company as an online marketing consultant. They make kitchenware, microware and so on. The are reviewing their overall strategy and as such they want to build up a community. Ideally, they would want to have the community in a separate domain. This domain wouldn't have the logo of the brand. This community wouldn't promote the brand itself. The brand would post content occassionally and link the store domain. The reasoning of this approach is to not interfere in the way of the community users and also the fact that the branded traffic acquired doesn't end up buying at the store I like this approach but I am concerned because the brand is not that big to have two domains separated and lose all the authority associated with one strong domain. I would definitely have everything under the same domain, store and community, otherwise we would have to acquire traffic for two domains. 1. What do you think of both scenarios, one domain versus two? Which one is better? 2. Do you know any examples of ecommerce companies with successful communities within the store domain? Thanks and regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | footd0 -
NEw domain extensions, are they worth it seo wise?
Hello I am curious if all of these new extensions for domains are worth it? So say you are a home builder and you bought homebuilder.construction - where as construction is a new extension, does this help seo? Or is it all just a big sales gimmick? Thank you for your thoughts
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Berner1 -
Is there a limit to images file names?
Hi, I have an eCommerce site with hundreds of product images. For management reasons files are named in length to have the product details in them.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
Is there a limit for a filename length before it is considered ambiguous or spammy etc.?
(it usually ranges 50-70 chars). Thanks0 -
Buying a domain banned by google
Hi , I came across a super domain for my business but found out that it was a great domain with 100s of link backs but is now banned by Google search engine meaning Google does not index content from that domain. Since the domains linkbacks are from my domin does it make sense to but that domain and redirect those link backs to another (301) and hope that the new domain gets some juice ... I know it is sounding crazy and may not be the best thing to do ethically but still wanted to check if its possible to get some juice.. Rgds Avinash
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Avinashmb0 -
Is it safe to redirect our .nl (netherlands) domain that we have just purchased to our .com domain?
Hi all! We've recently developed a German version of our website with German translation and now we have just purchased a .nl domain, but with this one, we want all of the copy to remain in English. Is it ok to redirect our .nl domain to our current .com website or will this give us bad SEO points? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | donaldsze0