Cayman SEO: Changing TLD's for higher rankings on Google

Just an update on my previous blog about the TLD (Top Level Domain) wars. Last week we redirected www.cayman4rent.ky to www.cayman4rent.com because we were not showing up for local searches in the United States and Canada and the website was on the first page for major keyword 'grand cayman rentals' if searched in the Cayman Islands. But if a user was searching in the US or Canada, they would not find us on the first page.

So we did a few things to the website...
1. We redirected www.cayman4rent.ky to www.cayman4rent.com
2. We changed the geographical target to "United States" on Webmaster Tools
3. We did a 301 redirect to all the existing URLs to the new URLs.

We are very happy to announce that even if we are still not showing up for the major keyword, 'grand cayman rentals' yet, we are now showing up for 'grand cayman rental' (singular) on # 6 (right under tripadvisor) and we are actually showing up in Canada on #4 for that keyword as well. That is a total of 5,400 monthly searches for that major keyword. So perhaps it is working. The pagerank of the website has not been transferred yet so that is something to look forward to!

The seamless redirect of the team from the .ky to the .com was fantastic and happened in less than 24 hours - so Congrats Team for a job well done! More updates on this topic, especially on the pagerank of the website.

Comments

Cayman SEO: Update on Changing to neutral Top Level Domains (TLD)

Just a very quick update on TLD's that address the geo targeting tool that Google released, or is it unleashed. One of our internal website www.cayman4rent.ky already had a page rank of 3 and was very visible for online searches for most rental keywords in the Cayman Islands and it its domain age was not even 1 year old. When google inserted the fixed geo-targeting location on Web Master Tools it was a wake up call of sorts. I quickly read up on what this could possible mean to the .ky and realized very quickly that Google was going to remove the .ky from its US data centres. I wrote a blog regarding TLDs back in February and you can read it here . On that blog I showed the fact that www.cayman4rent.ky was showing up for major keywords such as "grand cayman rentals" in the Cayman Islands but it was not showing up for the same keyword in the United States. I was crushed really because it mean that I would have to give it a neutral TLD such as a .com for it to thrive

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A few years ago, a client asked me if it mattered whether the TLD (top level domain) of a website was a .com or a .ky for Search Engine Optimization and a couple of years ago, I answered 'No, it doesn't matter' because there were several factors that determined search results and not just the TLD. Also it is important to note that Google's local search wasn't as strong as it is now. The TLD informed Google where your site was located and that was a good thing. Things have changed though and because we are a tourism destination and because we need to attract users in the US before they come to the islands, my answer then is wrong now. Yes it matters depending on your target market's geographical location. If your business is in the Cayman Islands and caters to users in the Cayman Islands ONLY then it still doesn't matter - use the .ky because its FREE and available to everyone on island. But if your business objective is to attract customers before

Cayman SEO NEWS: Unethical SEO practices by NETCLUES!

I am a very passionate person when it comes to work and sure, most of the time I don't have time to moderate comments on my blog. Not that there is alot of them mind you, but because I know some people are trying to ride on the link popularity of my blog caymanseo.blogspot.com, which has a pagerank of 4/10 - and because I know how difficult breaks can be - I don't mind and sometimes approve them. What I do mind is when a competing company does it. So my blog is decidedly no. 1 for most if not all the keywords relating to SEO and/or Internet Marketing in the Cayman Islands. Of course it is - I have applied alot of what I know about optimization to my blog. So it really makes me so angry that a competing company would even dare post a link back to their blog hoping to ride on my coat-tails. You should have made a comment at the very least and maybe I would have let it pass but to blatantly put a link back... thats just plain LAZY. Its embarrasing really. I would hate

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