Redirect or Not?

[Welshsparky]

Hi all

New here and I'm hoping one of you can advise me of the best course of action.

My dilemma:

I run a reasonably successful website with a .co.uk extension. This site has a Google PR of 3 and gets around 2500 visitors per day.

I have managed to buy the .com extension off the domain owner, but he has let it lapse from a PR5 to a lowly PR1. I am keen to use the .com but unsure of what the effects would be on my rankings in doing so.

Really need some advise on this one.

Thanks
Steve

[SkinnerW]

I believe logical choice would be redirect your new .com domain to the existing .co.uk

And welcome to the UKWW by the way!

[temi]

Welcome to UK WW Welshsparky, for a UK business, .com is "glamorous" but .co.uk make business sense. Please read smagain's post about why one use use .co.uk domain for UK businesses, you could lose traffic switching from .co.uk to .com rather than the other way round.

[Welshsparky]

Hi SkinnerW and Temi

The reason I am in a dilemma is 40% of my traffic comes from the US, 30% from UK, 20% from India and the rest is split up all over the place.

As I don't sell anything, the site is an article directory, I figured it might be better to use the .com

However, I don't want to lose my traffic so I guess it's better to redirect the .com?

Cheers
Steve

[Bagi Zoltán]

Steve if you would redirect your existing co.uk domain to the com using 301 permanent redirect you will experience improvement in your traffic since the relevance of the separate websites can be summarized..

[OldWelshGuy]

Set up a 301 redirect match from one to the other and you will be good to go. any request for any page on one version, will be delivered to the other version exact same page, not the home page. Smooth as silk and with minimum search engine upset.

[xhan]

If your sites already set up as a .co.uk I'd 301 redirect the .com to .co.uk, people dont like change :P

[smeagain]

There is an alternative but this is purely my opinion and will be shot down by many of our resident experts.
I would host the .com on a USA located server and duplicate the site completely. Leave the existing .co.uk as it is and if not already, consider putting it on a UK located server. I don't mean parking redirecting but completely duplicate a second site.

The old days when there was a duplication penalty have gone. What exists now is a "Duplication Filter". The effect would then be (IMO) for the appropriate site to be returned in the SERPs with the normally applied Geo Bias. USA serchers would get the .com returned and the UK searcher would get the UK returned in the SERPs. The other part of the jigsaw would be to elicit USA sites to link to the .com version and UK sites link to the .co.uk one.

Best of both worlds. I would do it this way, but there will be many chokibg on their beer as they resd this.

[bochgoch]

Originally Posted by xhan

If your sites already set up as a .co.uk I'd 301 redirect the .com to .co.uk

That would be my choice also.

[Welshsparky]

Sugar!

Everyone is saying something different!

Thankyou so much for your responses though. I think I'll redirect the .com to the .co.uk

bochgoch would you be interested in a home page link exchange? Although my site is hosted in the USA, I personally am from Cardiff.

The site is a general article directory that is rising fast on Alexa, lots of traffic coming in, more and more each day.

Steve