Domain advice required

[EliteIntegrity]

Hi all,

Please can I canvas your opinions and advice.

My situation

I currently have 3 domains, I will call them my-domain for the purposes of this post. I have my-domain.co.uk, my-domain.com and my-domain.net.

my-domain.co.uk is a shopping cart and is how I make most money. 95% of my customers and the large majority of visitors are from the UK.

my-domain.com is a static html site with loads of articles etc about my industry. It sends lots of customers to my-domain.co.uk and makes a few quid with adverts as well. The visitors are about 50% US, 40% UK and 10% other.

my-domain.net gets a minimal amount of traffic and an occasional sale.

What I want to do

All my sites are showing their age. I want to develop 1 really cool site with all the articles and a shop. I want all the domains to point to this one site.

If I was thinking of shutting down the existing content (after creating the new site) and say add 301 redirects from .co.uk and .net to the .com

But...

My question(s)

1)Will having the shop on my-domain.com effect my status with UK search engines where I get most of my customers from?

2)WIll I be able to maintain the combined number of visitors with just one site or am I likely to lose lots of the my-domain.co.uk traffic?

3)How should I go about this upgrade/consolidation or should I leave things as they are?

Many thanks
John

 

[Toni Anicic]

1. Most likely yes, it will affect your rankings in the UK.

2. Initially you will loose lots of traffic and rankings, but in the long run it might pay off.

3. I would do things a bit differently:

I would build everything on my-domain.co.uk

I would redirect the my-domin.com to the special part of my-domain.co.uk with articles such as my-domain.co.uk/news or /articles or /blog

I'd redirect my-domain.net to my-domain.co.uk

Thats the best I can say without actually seeing the sites you're talking about.

 

[RedEvo]

With a .com you can advise Google, in Webmaster Tools, that your site is targeting the UK. This is assumed with a .co.uk and can't be changed but can be with a .com.

d

 

[EliteIntegrity]

Thanks for the info so far.

Good points and ideas.

I was hoping to keep my UK volume as it is or better and improve the US and others so that eventually it is an international shop.

Am I better off trying to do this with totally seperate sites 1 for uk 1 for us? Or is 1 great site just as viable?

Thanks

 

[I, Brian]

IF working with a .com, host it in the UK if possible.

The main issue really is ensuring the integrity of the URLs - ideally, you want the same URLs as you currently have on your .co.uk to remain active, simply redirected.

If the .co.uk is the stronger site, what makes you think it makes better sense to use the .com? Are you targeting international traffic more?

 

[EliteIntegrity]

Thanks for your reply.

All the sites are hosted by 1and1.co.uk but the servers are located in Germany.

I thought about using the .com simply because the ideal long term objective would be that I would have lots of customers from all over the world and a .co.uk might put off all but UK customers. At the same time however I obviously don't want to lose the UK customers.

At the moment all the urls on the .co.uk are SEO unfriendly URLS and part of the plan was to use friendly URLS in the new solution. Obviously this would mean changing them. Is this a big problem as far as the search engines are concerned?

I really want to consolidate and improve but without messing up the current business.

Thanks all any further comments appreciated.

 

[Ali-v-8]

germany is europe.
I find 1 & 1 can be told to host in the UK.
Personally i don't like them because of past experience with a number of sites.
The tld thing its a bit unsure.( i am experimenting with a website ) .co.uk is a definate positive. .biz and .net are cool too.

Your plan to consolidate is a good move. Long-term it will be beneficial.

Thanks for your reply.

All the sites are hosted by 1and1.co.uk but the servers are located in Germany.

I thought about using the .com simply because the ideal long term objective would be that I would have lots of customers from all over the world and a .co.uk might put off all but UK customers. At the same time however I obviously don't want to lose the UK customers.

At the moment all the urls on the .co.uk are SEO unfriendly URLS and part of the plan was to use friendly URLS in the new solution. Obviously this would mean changing them. Is this a big problem as far as the search engines are concerned?

I really want to consolidate and improve but without messing up the current business.

Thanks all any further comments appreciated.