Hi there,

I have a website selling and promoting UK services, therefore targeting people in UK. It is a .com website, and I now know that a .co.uk website is more appropriate for SEO purpose. It is common sense in fact, as it sells english products to english people. Why did I choose .com???
Anyway..., my concern is regarding changing all this. Do you know where I could find ressources on how to change domain name without having an impact on SEO?

I would imagine the best solution is to put a 301 redirect on the old .com site.

Makes sense, but is there not a risk to lose ranking through that process?

I'm no expert, but I don't think there is. I would have thought that any short term dip in rankings will rapidly be overcome by the rise in google.co.uk rankings you'll get from having a .co.uk domain.

The 301 is the only way you can transfer any of the dot com's juice to the .co.uk domain; without it the new site will be starting off from scratch.

The one thing you have to accept when you change domains is that there will be a period where rankings drop along with a corresponding drop in traffic. How long it takes to recover depends on, well, I actually don't know, but the period can be two, three, sometimes four months. I always recommend that you start acquiring links to the new site as soon as it is active; first step would be to contact webmasters of any sites linking to yours seeking to get the link changed.

Google now recommends that 301s be kept in place for 6 months, (not sure if the other SEs have stated time periods), but I like to keep them around as long as feasible.

It does make sense. Thank you very much Jim. You really answered my question.