New Domain Name For Site That Ranks Highly on Key Terms

[DanielFreedman]

Here's my problem -- which is actually a pretty good problem to have.

My client is a speciality service provider in an extremely competitive field. It charges 3 to 5 times what others do for providing a super-premium level of service. It doesn't have -- nor does it want -- many customers. I can't go into details, but let's just say the business model is a bit like the charity or premium newsletter publishing model. It is extremely hard to recruit new members -- but once recruited, members tend to stay for a long time at high price points. Personal referral is key.

As result of my efforts over the last 90 days, the client's SEO results have skyrocketed. After a couple of false starts, we have focussed on key terms the target demographic is likely to search, rather than the generic terms others in the industry use. We have also had great success with a social media strategy -- since the few people likely to be interested in paying such high prices know like-minded folks.

For the first time, my client is getting "walk in" prospects. They are delighted! But they are not really walk-ins. They have already found the site -- either through SERPs or Facebook or Twitter.

Now we need to get to the next level.

Here's the problem: the client's domain name sucks. It is short, but combines an acronym with one of the words in its long-version name. It uses the British spelling version of the long name fragment, even though most Canadians now use American spelling. And it is a .ca, rather than a dot.com

So I think we have to bite the bullet and change to the long, dot com version of the name, which is available and has the additional benefit of having embedded within it a key search term.

I am basically an editorial/content guy and not a tech guy. The IT guys at my firm are strongly encouraging me to make the change...in very "colorful" language. We can certainly do 301 redirects at the page level.

But I would like some additional validation before proceeding.

My questions are:

• how much link juice might we lose? I've seen the figure of 10% bandied around. Is it accurate?

• might we see a temporary dip in results? If so, how long would it last?

• what questions did I forget to ask? What additional info do you need to offer informed advice ?

[RyanKent]

how much link juice might we lose? I've seen the figure of 10% bandied around. Is it accurate?

I am not aware of any solid measuring tool which can offer an exact analysis of how much link juice is lost. All the information I have ever encountered offers the 10% figure as the maximum amount of link juice lost. The actual figure is 1 - 10%, not a flat 10%.

might we see a temporary dip in results? If so, how log would it last.

The loss of link juice is permanent as long as the re-directed links are used. Once your migration is complete, Google and other search engines will update their links as they crawl the site. This can take several weeks depending on the size and depth of the site. Once complete, then all of your search traffic will go straight to your site.

You can further help by cleaning up your site. Often you may have articles with anchor links using the old URL. If you update these links to the new URL, then they wont require the re-directs. This change is important because readers often copy your content and paste it to other sites. Use your crawl report for this process.

The last thing you can do is try to update anyone who links to your site with your new URL. In many cases this may not be feasible. Sometimes you have a strong relation with a site who links to you, and can request for your link to be updated. This also works with any directory links to your site.

In summary, you may see a dip but that is not likely. Links are just one of 200+ factors involved in calculating your placement in search results, and the re-direct juice loss is very small. You should gain a boost by the .com name along with the keyword added to your URL. Your benefits should outweigh the cost.

[DanielFreedman]

Thanks. Very helpful.

[EGOL]

Here's the problem: the client's domain name sucks. It is short, but combines an acronym with one of the words in its long-version name. It uses the British spelling version of the long name fragment, even though most Canadians now use American spelling. And it is a .ca, rather than a dot.com

I would be using "colorful" language too!

But I would like some additional validation before proceeding.

More colorful language. 

- how much link juice might we lose? I've seen the figure of 10% bandied around. Is it accurate?

Nobody knows for sure.  Not an awful lot.

- might we see a temporary dip in results? If so, how long would it last?

You might have unstable SERPs for a few days to a couple of weeks.  It's possible that your rankings could drop a place or two. But most of the time there is very little damage if you do the switch properly.

- what questions did I forget to ask? What additional info do you need to offer informed advice

Your question seems to be... "Should I do this?"    If this was my site the answer would be yes.

In the past year we have done two domain moves.  One was positive results all around, great results.   The other was up everywhere except the trophy KW which we slipped from #1,2,3 to #2,3,4 but are working to get it back.  Sales are still very strong.