Impact of SEO by changing from .com -> .ie address

[reacharound]

Hi there,
New to the site. I look after a website for my partner, it's for a fitness business in Dublin and the site was originally registered as a .com one about 8 years ago. Most of her customers find her via her website, so the SEO isn't too bad at the moment I guess. A friend of a friend advised that since her business is centred on a physical in Dublin city centre (her studio) that instead of having a .com domain a .ie domain as it will mean that the site is only competing for fitness studios in the context of Ireland (.ie) rather than the whole world (.com). Ok, I'm not phrasing that very well but I hope you get my drift. In short, for a business based in Ireland a .ie address is better than a .com one?

Next question if it does make sense to switch to the .ie address then how can I switch without losing the built up SEO kudos for the site having been around for 8 years. Is there some mechanism within SEO parlance to indicate that the .ie is a replacement for the .com version of th site, without losing search ranking?

Any pointers would be useful, thanks!

 

[mneylon]

If you've got a .com and have had it for the last 8 years, then I can't see why you'd want to switch.
Unless of course the .com is really hard to market ..

 

[reacharound]

If you've got a .com and have had it for the last 8 years, then I can't see why you'd want to switch.
Unless of course the .com is really hard to market ..

Well if (a) having a .ie would be better for this business & website and (b) if there was a way to transfer the 8 year longevity of the .com to the .ie address, then maybe it would help with search rankings?

 

[fafanqll]

redirect domain .com to .ie using modrewrite in .htaccess .
That should move power and users of Your site _

 

[maz007]

Its better you stick to the .com domain and If you really want to move on .ie domain then you can redirect your domain as fafaqll said. But remember .ie would be a new domain and you will however need to do SEO from the start. Some of the link juice will be available from redirect but you can not transfer the complete link juice to .ie domain. Google also prefers the old domains. So 8 years is a big time. If i were you, I would never think to change the domains.

 

[reacharound]

Ok, thanks for the replies

 

[paul]

if the domain has some local significance, like dublinfitness.com changing it to dublinfitness.ie really wouldn't be my choice. Now if it's ourfitgym.com versus ourfitgym.ie, I would just use the .ie for print ads (and track he visitors from it) and redirect to the .COM.

You can target .COMs to Ireland on GWT, plus using other indicators (address & phone number on the website) you shouldn't really have much issue with the .COM. If it's been used for 8 years, I'd leave well alone.

If you really want to use the .IE switching it over straight away isn't so advisable. There are a few strategies that you could use to build up the .IE over time, like use that for your blog, and then once that starts to get significant traffic merge the two sites.

either way I would consider my options (maybe talk to an expert and share your stats) before changing things too drastically.

HTH

 

[reacharound]

You can target .COMs to Ireland on GWT, plus using other indicators (address & phone number on the website) you shouldn't really have much issue with the .COM. If it's been used for 8 years, I'd leave well alone.

Yeah have had that geotargeting turned on via GWT for quite a while. I might post up a link to the site when I've finished up implementing a few of the other SEO tasks that I've left to do in case anyone has any other advice.

 

[Juice]

You say that the SEO "isn't too bad at the moment" - can you be more specific?

Going only on the info you've given I'd say it makes no sense to switch. Even with a generic TLD, Google is very good at guessing which country you're targeting (it helps too if the site is hosted in the target country).

You can manually set the target country in Google Webmaster Tools - your friend should definitely do this.

If it was a NEW site, I'd say go with the .ie

 

[reacharound]

You can manually set the target country in Google Webmaster Tools - your friend should definitely do this.

If it was a NEW site, I'd say go with the .ie

I've set this in Google Webmaster Tools

You say that the SEO "isn't too bad at the moment" - can you be more specific?

Sure, the website is Live & Breathe Pilates - it runs Wordpress and uses the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin. I've attached a screenshot from Google Webmaster Tools so you can see the main queries and the search ranking over the past 3 months - as you can see it's not doing too bad, but there is room for improvement. I'd be grateful if you could let me know if you spot anything obvious that I've missed to help improve the rankings. Thanks!

View attachment 505

EDIT: The image isn't displaying at full resolution so I've copied and pasted the text

Query Impressions Clicks CTR Avg. position
pilates classes dublin 1,600 35 2% 6.6
reformer pilates dublin 320 30 9% 7.2
pilates dublin 250 <10 - 33
pilates classes 90 <10 - 6.7
pilates dublin city centre 35 <10 - 11
pilates classes dublin city centre 30 <10 - 9.2
pilates dublin 8 16 <10 - 1.4
pilates classes dublin 2 16 <10 - 14
pilates reformer classes dublin 12 <10 - 5.1
pilates reformer dublin 12 <10 - 7.1
reformer pilates dublin city centre 12 <10 - 8.9
pregnancy pilates dublin 12 <10 - 43
pilates class dublin <10 <10 - 7.7
pilates classes dublin 8 <10 <10 - 1.0
pilates camden street dublin <10 <10 - 1.0
pilates for lower back <10 <10 - 10
pregnancy exercise classes dublin <10 <10 - 89
flexibility classes dublin <10 <10 - 11
pilates classes in dublin <10 <10 - 4.0
reformer pilates south dublin <10 <10 - 10
pilates equipment dublin <10 <10 - 3.0
pilates dublin 2 <10 <10 - 16
stott pilates dublin <10 <10 - 5.8