.ac.uk subdomain vs .co.uk domain

[RG_SEO]

I'd be grateful if I could check my thinking...

I've agreed to give some quick advice to a non profit organisation who are in the process of moving their website from an ac.uk subdomain to a .co.uk domain. They believe that their SEO can be improved considerably by making this migration.

From my experience, I don't see how this could be the case. Does the unique domain in itself offer enough ranking benefit to justify this approach? The subdomain is on a very high authority domain with many pre-existing links, which makes me even more nervous about this approach.

Does anyone have any opinions on this that they could share please? I'm guessing that it is possible to migrate safely and that there might be branding advantages, but from an actual SEO point of view there is not that much benefit? It looks like most of their current traffic is branded traffic.

[RyanPurkey]

From the details you provide, it sounds like the SEO benefits would be non-existent to worse than before.  Are they not an academic institution? Is there some other factor pushing them from ac.uk to co.uk?  There is no tld that carries an inherit SEO benefit and typically only SEO risks in migrating a site.

[RG_SEO]

They are a society that is linked to an academic institution. I don't know if there are any other factors pushing them from ac.uk to co.uk I'm afraid. It sounds like this is something that I should clarify with them when I talk to them.

Thanks for the advice!

[RyanPurkey]

You're welcome.  Definitely get to the 'whys' behind what they're doing or thinking about doing. Also ask them who they hope to compete with by doing so, or what problems they currently see that they think this will fix. Things like that should give you a much better understanding of what they're doing as well as ideas on alternate solutions.