Changing domain names

but keeping the site on current domain too

[leef50]

We are considering changing our company name and also our domain name. We currently operate using a .net but feel this may put our targeted UK customers off and so wish to register a new .co.uk domain name.

We have spent a lot of time with reciprocal links on our current site and enjoy good ranking in SERPS.

We want to keep the site running on the .net but also upload the site to the .co.uk and start promoting the .co.uk and change all the links over to that. What impact would having this same site on 2 different domain names (the branding would change obviously and possibly the colour schemes but the content (news,order system, support section, members area etc) would remain exactly the same as will the navigation.

What things should I be aware of with regards to google (since it gives us 90% of our business) when doing this? Will google pick up on the duplication? The sites will in no way be crosslinked directly.

LeeF50

[fathom]

A complete duplication is unwise, but dividing your current site up between the 2 domains is a very good strategy.

Two sites can initially grow faster and assist each other in ranked position.

You will need to put much planning into this.

Brand and brand trust are two major consideration that need to be addressed for the long-term.

Example:

1. If your primary market (for products/services) is UK based moving your products to the co.uk would better help develop the UK brand.

2. Corporate info would be best served by staying with the current site as .net does present a certain international advantage (.net = network or forward thinking for the future distribution in other locations outside of co.uk and/or distribution other complementing product/service ventures).

3. In addition, if you are both product and service based, a corporate division of this can distinguish each site in their own right.

4. Navigational hierarchy - maintaining an "interface" site design so that the .net still appears as the mainpage where co.uk is a physical button (externally link to a non-default page of co.uk (e.g. - domain.net has a button which links to domain.co.uk/products.html for products).

This allows you the benefit of managing a separate mainpage for co.uk outside of the normal structure (a splash page if you will) that you can individually promote to UK visitors without reducing the international potential -- UK special promotions, pricing, etc. while maintaining the "potential" international look of .net promoting to the rest of world as you attempt to increase your co.uk market share.

5. If well planned - crosslinking to co.uk from all pages at .net (noting the button is part of the top level link hierarchy) will produce exceptional link popularity without over crosslinking, or producing "un-structured" crosslinks.

6. As well if you maintain .net as the primary corporate site all pages at co.uk can link to .net's mainpage "only" (noting copyright and ownership statement - link) and again without the fear of being penalized for over crosslinking.

There are enormous benefits to this overall site design, but planning can not be neglected.

[Henley]

Leef50,
Allow me to give you my experience recently with a similar problem. It won't give you the answers but will pose some of the problems. Perhaps someone else more experienced can come up with the best strategy.
A client asked me to take over a site, remove it to a different server, make a number of page additions and changes. The client had had numerous server and uploading problems and didn't want to try and change the existing site.
Since he had an unused co.uk domain I prepared the new site and uploaded to the new server. I linked another site which was visited daily by Googlebot and the new site was picked up in 24hrs.
At this point I had the .com domain pointed at the .co.uk domain.
The old site remained in Google for at least a month along side the new site, then started to drift out.
However, the new site is now UNRANKED, so for the moment I have lost my PR of 5.
I have seen other near duplicate sites side by side in the SERPS and so long as they are NOT seen as mirrors by Google they seem to coexist happily.Whether your proposed changes are sufficient to qualify as a totally different site is a moot point
Phasing out my .com site was obviously handled by me badly.
So, I would be interested in hearing the ideal way of doing it. Hope this helps a little if only to point out the dangers.
Regards
Henley

[fathom]

If you are actually phrasing out the old domain, still want the previously built "brand", or can not afford two sites hosted...

direct the new domain to your DNS, re-direct the old.

Both domain will appear a same site if use by visitors and search engines will evently drop the old domain.

[Henley]

Sorry Leef,
Most of my comments are irrelevant as I see you want to keep the existing site not consider as one option phasing it out.
Henley

[leef50]

Henley, we were planning on changing totally from our .net and running solely as a .co.uk but obviously going straight to .co.uk would mean a loss of business until we start promoting under the new name hence the idea of running the two in situe as the .net gets phased out and the .co.uk (with new branding etc) takes over the reigns.

LeeF50

[leef50]

How much difference would it make if the HTML code changed (but looks the same in a browser) and filenames and image names were changed? The internal content would remain the same. Would this make google see it as a new site or a copy?

What if I re-write the content so it is differenct but still means the same thing?

Surely this would not be seen as a duplicate site?

LeeF50

[jdMorgan]

leef50,

You can point both the old and new domains to the same server. On that server, check the REMOTE_HOST field of the incoming requests to get the domain name requested by the user (or robot). If the requested domain name is the new domain, do nothing. If it is the old domain, do an external 301-Moved Permanently redirect to the new domain name and keep the requested page/object the same.

On Apache server, using mod_rewrite [httpd.apache.org] in .htaccess (which is how I do it on a shared host) it looks like this:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.mydomain\.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mydomain.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]

If you wish to pass query strings, e.g. "?id=123&product=widget&style=fuzzy&color=blue" from one domain to the other, then you'll have to tweak the above by adding the [QSA] flag.

The above is a trivial example; You may also want to avoid the redirect for direct IP-address access in case of DNS failure for example, but that can easily be added:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.mydomain\.com$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^123\.45\.67\.89$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mydomain.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]

If you are not using Apache, there are other ways of doing this. A WebmasterWorld site search for "301 redirect" "new domain name" and related terms may be of help.

In my experience - admittedly limited to "moving" three sites - duplicate content is not a problem if all of the "duplicate site" domains return a 301 redirect, and only the one domain they all redirect to does not.

HTH,
Jim