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I have a webiste with a .com domain that is a year old. The business is a shop based in Ireland and I have purchased a .ie domain. I plan to move the website over to the new domain, SEO Good or Bad idea?

Old Url - SmythsOfTerenure.com | New Url - SmythsComputerRepair.ie

(I am using Fake names and fictional business in the example Url's)

The new domain has my main keyword in it. The old domain has my family name and business location (city district)

It currently ranks high for lots of relevant keywords in Google with low traffic and low competition. Current website traffic is about 80 session per week. 80% of that traffic is Organic from Google.

I am changing domain in an attempt to help SEO long term by having a CC TLD (.ie rather than .com) and having my main Keyword in the domain.

I plan to do 301 re-directs from old to new and update GW Tools and G Analytics but am I making a mistake changing it at all as I know rankings may fall in the sort term.

Homepage PR=0 and very few inbound links.

Should I just leave it on the old domain?
Or after a few months should I be back up ranking as well as I am now?

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  • Don't forget to approve the answer if you like it.
    – Jérôme Verstrynge
    Aug 25, 2014 at 17:17

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It is not a bad idea if you implement 301 redirects from .com to .ie properly.

I am changing domain in an attempt to help SEO long term by having a CC TLD (.ie rather than .com) and having my main Keyword in the domain.

There will be an impact, but it will be small regarding SEO. Delivering valuable content and attracting backlinks has more impact. Proper meta titles and descriptions go a long way too.

Should I just leave it on the old domain? Or after a few months should I be back up ranking as well as I am now?

If you implement proper redirects, you would rank again within 2-3 weeks at most. You may even not feel the difference since your site has PR 0 and few backlinks.

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  • I agree with this answer. I would like to point out that the domain name has a smaller effect now days except under fairly narrow conditions where it can really help a lot. As well, with .ie, you can really take advantage of local search which I recommend looking into. This is a good time to make any changes. Good Luck!
    – closetnoc
    Aug 21, 2014 at 14:34
  • Thank you JVestry and Closetnoc for your answers. I am going ahead with the change and 301's. I will report back in the future to tell you how it went.
    – Denis
    Sep 12, 2014 at 15:15

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