Changing main domain over

Hosting
1

Hi,

I currently have three domains pointing to my site. The main one is made up of two keywords (leatheraccessories.com.au) but has no direct association to my company. The two others have my company name and variations of keywords (skincraftleatherbelts.com and skincraftleather.com)

I wanted to change the main domain to skincraftleather.com, as this is what i use for all of my offline promotions. Also im thinking it might be easier to locate this as the official ‘skincraft’ site when scrolling through search results and easier to remember for returning customers and word of mouth. Also at the moment ‘skincraft’ is my number one search string referral.

I was wondering if changing the main domain from leatheraccessories.com.au to skincraftleather.com will cause any major disruption to my site? I also wondered if the work that has been done on my current main domain will loose its influence over search results once changed? It has been active since early 2010 but has not had a great deal of time spent on it as of yet. So i thought changing it now before i go any further might be of benefit.

I was also wondering if three domains was to many for the one site and maybe if dedicating one to a landing page would be a good option?

Thanks…

2

since you gonna change the domain from a localized domain to a .com one I would assume you would see some changes in SERP.

you can keep your old site for few months and do a 301 redirect for every page to the new site; that might help somewhat.

3

That’s about the best way to do it. The 301 redirects would tell the SE’s that those are the new pages and he should keep the rankings for the site’s pages close. There will be some bouncing around, but after a while, they’ll stabilize. Not sure how long the process will take though. The SE’s are getting quicker all the time since they want to provide the most accurate results.

4

Thanks guys.
After some investigation i believe that two of the three domains are currently permanently 301 redirected to the main. Do you think if i was to change one of the redirected to the main domain then again 301 redirect the old main domain to the new one, that this would work ok. Will a 301 redirect be healthy as a permanent setup?

5

Will a 301 redirect be healthy as a permanent setup?

I believe Yes. But in terms of your web site SEO that will help more as yuur previous SEO efforts will be saved.

6

SC,

Yes, I do that all the time with my (clients’) websites whenever they decide to emphasize a new name or brand. It’s far simpler than changing your account name with an ISP.

Regards,

DK

7

Thanks guys, big help!!