Implications of changing Domain Name with SEO etc...

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Zascar

New Member
I started this website a few months ago and its going quite well so far. I have not done a huge amount of promoting the site yet, I want to to grow some naturally some more and then when it has a better presence I will put more effort into promoting and advertising etc. I'm gradually adding more decent content and getting strong organic traffic from Google etc. The forum has got a few members who are regular visitors but its this I want to grow most, but so far it's quite slow.

I've just bought a new domain name: www.digital.dj - and I will soon swap the whole site over, but I'm wondering how this affects search engine results? If I do a proper redirect etc will google reindex soon after and be much the same, or will I loose out because I change everything? I've few backlinks so far so that will not really matter.

Anything else I should know/worry about?
Thanks
 

mneylon

Administrator
Staff member
If you do a proper 301 redirect you should be fine. This site was originally a sub domain, so I had to do that :)
 

glengara

New Member
I can see the attraction but with G increasingly regionalising results I'd be a bit wary of switching to a .dj domain, how do they fare on G.co.uk?
 

Cormac

New Member
Many people will say it doesn't matter, but I personally think there is a bias towards .coms

If I were you I would use digital.dj, it's far more unique and clever than the current domain you have.
 

Zascar

New Member
Cormac is right, my current domain isn't the best. I think my new one is fantastic, I was so lucky to get it.

Are there any sites that give more info on if google gives a bigger weighting to .com's?
 

gary.b

New Member
I say go with the Digital.Dj domain - it's short, memorable, and is definitely better than your dot com.

Forget about "SE ranking .coms higher bla bla bla.." - with a domain like digital.dj whatever little "penalty" google may have for .dj TLDs won't matter. (i seriously doubt it has any..)

The domain is a lot more "human friendly" and that's all that matters in the end.

Just make sure to properly redirect everything with .htaccess stuff.
 

Zascar

New Member
It's been over a month now and I definitely think that it has affected my SEO...

I'll have to work harder now...
 

louie

New Member
It takes time for google to remove and update to new pages.
One of my sites went from 35000 to 24000 pages because of a small change that I had to do to remove duplicates and pages that had no useful content in a mater of 2 weeks.
 

Cormac

New Member
SEO isn't an over night thing.
If I were you I would look at removing those session IDs from your forum. Not sure if there is a plugin for phpbb which does that.
 

Zascar

New Member
What do you mean Cormac?

http://digital.dj/forum/behringer-b-control-dj-bcd3000-t21.html

Do you mean remove the "-t21.html"

I got someone else to do it for me and that was the the best he could do.

Does it make a difference?
 
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