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Domains: Should I update my current .co site or create a new .com site?

Graham Onak, 13 year search marketing veteran. Owner @GainTap. answered:

No, do not change your domain. There's no benefit moving an established .co to .com as long as you:
- Have the redirect in place from .com -> .co
- *IMPORTANT* have your emails forwarding from .com -> .co respectively for each unique email. If you have info@mysite.co people are going to type info@mysite.com and you want to get those emails.

Yes, *consider* redesigning / upgrading your site (using a development / staging site) to improve load time / conversion while retaining .co. No need to change the domain, just improve what's broken eg: the site, hosting, CMS, etc.

Why trust me:
- I have a client we built a .co for their new company in the healthcare (surgery) industry involving international travel. Trust factor is huge here. They're doing $10 million / year, .co is not a problem. More important to have solid service / product / marketing / data / conversion rate / sales process than to worry about .co / .com.
- Run a 5 yr old search marketing consultancy that specializes in preventing / correcting issues from redesigns.

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Question

I acquired an online B2B business about a year ago. The original owners created the website with a .co extension and made patchwork updates over the years. I subsequently purchased the .com domain and have it redirected to the .co domain.
Fortunately, most of our business is generated through referrals and paid ads, but I'd like to improve our SEO. Based on an audit, I found that we have some pretty big hurdles to overcome such as an 8-second load time, 400+ pages (mostly redirects from their original website with poorly performing content), and a very low domain authority.
My question is whether I should build a new website on the .com domain that I currently have redirected to the .co domain (and reverse the redirect). Is it worth it to give up the age, limited domain authority and organic traffic (albeit very low) of the .co site to have a faster, more user-friendly .com site?

Answer

Graham Onak answered

No, do not change your domain. There's no benefit moving an established .co to .com as long as you:
- Have the redirect in place from .com -> .co
- *IMPORTANT* have your emails forwarding from .com -> .co respectively for each unique email. If you have info@mysite.co people are going to type info@mysite.com and you want to get those emails.

Yes, *consider* redesigning / upgrading your site (using a development / staging site) to improve load time / conversion while retaining .co. No need to change the domain, just improve what's broken eg: the site, hosting, CMS, etc.

Why trust me:
- I have a client we built a .co for their new company in the healthcare (surgery) industry involving international travel. Trust factor is huge here. They're doing $10 million / year, .co is not a problem. More important to have solid service / product / marketing / data / conversion rate / sales process than to worry about .co / .com.
- Run a 5 yr old search marketing consultancy that specializes in preventing / correcting issues from redesigns.