Should I be redirecting a .gov.au domain to a .com/.com.au Marketing URL?

[hergs]

Hi everyone,

First time post - what a great community! On a trial at the moment but will definitely be signing up to PRO.

The situation

I'm helping to promote an event in Australia (lets call it "myevent"). The event also goes by a nickname "myev" (which isn't searched as much as "myevent").

The event for the most part is promoted offline as www.myevent.com. As it currently stands (and appears to have been the case for a number of years), www.myevent.com and www.myevent.com.au 302 redirect to www.mylocation.gov.au/myev

The event is pretty much number 1 for keywords around "my event" and "myev", despite little attention being paid to on page optimisation and issues around duplicate content which I intend to fix. The domain being indexed by Google is www.mylocation.gov.au/myev .

Open site explorer stats

Open Site explorer shows www.mylocation.gov.au/myev as having a strong domain authority, and hundreds of backlinks. www.myevent.com and www.myevent.com.au have domain authorities in the 20s and about 30-40 backlinks each.

The conundrum

I've had a chat with the IT guys running the site(s) and they mentioned they'll be switching the way the redirects work, so everything goes to www.myevent.com NOT the .gov.au URL. I've done a bit of reading on the forums and understand that 301s should be used in order to pass the juice/authority from the existing domain (in this case www.location.gov.au/mye). I understand not all of this will be passed.

What I'm not sure about is which URL should be the final preferred destination. I may not have a choice - www.myevent.com has been the preferred URL for a long time - but want to know if this will affect the performance in search results if the .com.au isn't used as the final destination (even though we would be redirecting from it)?

Any suggestions / ideas / help would be most appreciated. I hope this all makes sense - I'm relatively new to the whole SEO world!

Best wishes and many thanks.

[Mikpam]

I've read your question a couple of times and I think I can provide some insight . A 301 from the www.location.gov.au/mye should pass around 90-98% juice so shouldn't be a huge hump to overcome, now as the preferred destination it boils down to the answer to a couple of questions to make it brief:

1. Which has more content relative to the event or intent ( a very rough metric should be site:www.myevent.com "myev" and  site:www.myevent.com.au "myev" and see what is indexed better) ? If we are to consider the sites even have enough non duplicate content.

2. Is the event specific to .au ? Are you looking to promote internationally? If .au specific then go with the .au - you can 301 the .com to the .au anyways

Hope I understood the question and wishing this helped you out mate.

[hergs]

Thank you very much for the quick answer Mik. Much appreciated.

The event is specific to .au but does have international appeal - however the vast majority of searches do occur in Australia during the event period.

Would you still suggest having .com.au as the final destination (i.e. 301 the .com to the .au?)

Many thanks and best wishes.

[Mikpam]

Herg,

That determination in my opinion depends on which domain has the most potential to appear to the majority of your target demographic hence I would lean towards the .au . I did a quick peek at Google.com(US) and entered "Sydney events" and "Sydney opera calendar" to check out a hunch and this verified that .au domains were indeed performing well when the local intent is present even on this end of the pond .

I would use the .au to give you a leg up in your effort to reach your primary targets.

Best of Luck Mate

[hergs]

Thank you my friend much appreciated.

Best wishes.