Moving from .com domain to .co.uk domain

IrishIrish

hey lads,

I posted here the other day about my new site which is doing great in google.com but I need it to be on google.co.uk instead. Having had some replies on here and also having done more research online I discovered that I need to have a .co.uk and/or have UK based hosting to rank highly in google uk. At the moment I have neither of these and because switching to a UK based host isn't an option I have decided to buy a .co.uk domain instead.

The question I need answered now is how do I go about switching my site from the .com to the .co.uk? Are all my articles I have published on other sites that link to the .com now wasted since the .com is useless to me if it is not found in google.co.uk? Is there any way in which I can keep everything as it is and redirect to my new .co.uk domain and will google UK then pick this up and start ranking my .co.uk site or would all the backlinks have to lead directly to my .co.uk site :D

Appreciate any help or advise. cheers.

pixeldesign

You have to start building backlinks again to your new domain, you will loose almost everything.If you put a permanent redirect from .com to co.uk then you might get a little boost in serps, but very little.If i were you i wouldnt change anything.You can get very good rankings on google uk with your actual domain if you work a little harder.I dont think google cares so much about the domain extension.Use Google Webmaster tools to target your website to UK.

IrishIrish

pixeldesign wrote: »

You have to start building backlinks again to your new domain, you will loose almost everything.If you put a permanent redirect from .com to co.uk then you might get a little boost in serps, but very little.If i were you i wouldnt change anything.You can get very good rankings on google uk with your actual domain if you work a little harder.I dont think google cares so much about the domain extension.Use Google Webmaster tools to target your website to UK.

Hmmm have you got experience with a .com on google.uk? I have changed my Geo-target to the UK usin google webmaster tools, but I only did it last week and I believe it can take up to 3 months to kick in? :mad:

I think I might take your advice and leave it as it is for now and try work harder on getting UK backlinks. Do you know of any UK backlink services? I used article marketing automation and free traffic system which provided great results very quickly however these are both american based and only improve my rankings on google.com so far.

The Muppet

If you do decide to move your domain and still have acces to your .com domain you could use htaccess 301 redirects to inform spiders of the new location of your pages. It would save you some hassle with your backlinks.

cormee

Set up 301 redirects from all your. com pages to the new. co.uk pages and set the. co.uk domain as the new address in Google Webmaster tools, you may see a drop in traffic initially but it should go back to old levels fairly quickly. The most important thing is your redirects - if you're unsure how to set them up get help from someone who knows how to do it.

IrishIrish

cormee wrote: »

Set up 301 redirects from all your. com pages to the new. co.uk pages and set the. co.uk domain as the new address in Google Webmaster tools, you may see a drop in traffic initially but it should go back to old levels fairly quickly. The most important thing is your redirects - if you're unsure how to set them up get help from someone who knows how to do it.

If I was to do this would my .co.uk domain start climbing up the google.co.uk rankings?

cormee

Probably. Google serves results tailored to the local market so it would favour a co.uk over a .com on a UK based search.

It's worth mentioning however that in theory you shouldn't need to do anything more than set the UK as your target country for your .com in Google Webster Tools.

IrishIrish

cormee wrote: »

Probably. Google serves results tailored to the local market so it would favour a co.uk over a .com on a UK based search.

It's worth mentioning however that in theory you shouldn't need to do anything more than set the UK as your target country for your .com in Google Webster Tools.

Yeh I understand this, but i've read a lot about this topic online over past few days and I feel .co.uk domains are the way to go to get ranked in google UK, especially since i dont have UK hosting. Its only $10 anyway for the domain, may as well just get it and start over. I've only had the site up 2 weeks anyway.

Cheers for the help guys. I'll try work out the site transfer and redirects tomorrow!

The Muppet

IrishIrish wrote: »

Cheers for the help guys. I'll try work out the site transfer and redirects tomorrow!

Theres nothing difficult about 301 redirects, you'll find loads of tutorials on Google.

cormee

IrishIrish wrote: »

Yeh I understand this, but i've read a lot about this topic online over past few days and I feel .co.uk domains are the way to go to get ranked in google UK, especially since i dont have UK hosting. Its only $10 anyway for the domain, may as well just get it and start over. I've only had the site up 2 weeks anyway.

Cheers for the help guys. I'll try work out the site transfer and redirects tomorrow!

In the long-term what you're doing is definitely the right thing to do. Best of luck.

As The Muppet says - there's nothing particularly difficult about 301 redirects, but do be careful as setting them incorrectly can have a pretty serious effect.

I'm not sure what pixeldesign means about building backlinks and losing almost everything. If you own both domains and have a permanent redirect set up properly Google knows you've switched domains so there should be no losses.

PaulPinnacle

cormee wrote: »

I'm not sure what pixeldesign means about building backlinks and losing almost everything. If you own both domains and have a permanent redirect set up properly Google knows you've switched domains so there should be no losses.

There is a deterioration in the benefits of backlinks when passed through a redirect, so it can cause an impact on SERPs, but 'losing almost everything' is a little strong (the benefits you retain are enough to make it vital to always set up 301 redirects correctly in a case like this, even ignoring the issues surrounding dead links, but it is important to do it on a page by page basis and not simply 301 the entire domain to the new home page).

You don't 'need' a co.uk or UK hosting to rank well on UK searches, but it can help. If you have the co.uk ccTLD it removes all doubt about the targeting of the site. If you have a gTLD that isn't hosted in the target country, then you'll be depending on the webmaster targeting (which obviously won't help in a search engine other than the one(s) you set it in).

Given it's a new site with only limited work done to date (I can't imagine the link building to date is too extensive if it's only 2 weeks old) then moving to the .co.uk does sound like a good idea (always hard to give a 'general' answer or a specific one with limited information - so feel free to ignore).

Do take care with any "free traffic system". I'm not saying it will get you in trouble with any of the webmaster guidelines, but these types of schemes and services can be 'questionable' and end up doing far more harm than good.

cormee

PaulPinnacle wrote: »

There is a deterioration in the benefits of backlinks when passed through a redirect, so it can cause an impact on SERPs, but 'losing almost everything' is a little strong

I've fairly limited experience but always found it to be a temporary deterioration, do you think it's longer-term?

IrishIrish

Cheers guys, I;ve done all the redirects today and have put all the content on to the new site now. But is there a way of "de-indexing" my old site now though so I'm not penalised for having duplicate content?

tomED

IrishIrish wrote: »

Cheers guys, I;ve done all the redirects today and have put all the content on to the new site now. But is there a way of "de-indexing" my old site now though so I'm not penalised for having duplicate content?

If you've done the redirects correctly, you won't need to worry about that.

A quick look at the site looks like you haven't handled all pages with a 301 redirect.

cormee

tomED wrote: »

If you've done the redirects correctly, you won't need to worry about that.

A quick look at the site looks like you haven't handled all pages with a 301 redirect.

Yes, the link on your (IrishIrish) signature goes to the .com without redirecting

IrishIrish

tomED wrote: »

If you've done the redirects correctly, you won't need to worry about that.

A quick look at the site looks like you haven't handled all pages with a 301 redirect.

cormee wrote: »

Yes, the link on your (IrishIrish) signature goes to the .com without redirecting

Cheers guys, I only noticed this now. Any idea why this would be, if you click the link it doesn't redirect, but if you type in the same address it does redirect.

tomED

IrishIrish wrote: »

Cheers guys, I only noticed this now. Any idea why this would be, if you click the link it doesn't redirect, but if you type in the same address it does redirect.

Hi IrishIrish

That's still not done correctly.

Use the "site" command in google search, e.g. :
http://www.google.ie/search?q=site%3ajuwelaquariums.com

You will see all the pages listed on Google. Each one of these should be redirected to the corresponding .co.uk page.