Hey Guys, since my new site which has .us extension is not doing good on the search engine, it can't be even found for its own name. I don't why search engine seem to be so prejudiced on ccTLDs, I am thinking of migrating my site to another domain name with popular extensions may be .com or .net. Do you think it's a good move? Or, should i wait and work on building links for the old site? If I migrate, how can I still retain the links from the old domain name? And, do I need to change something on my .htaccess? Please help me with your suggestions! I don't know if I am posting on the right category though!
Search engines don't care about the extension. A move to .com might not be a bad move from a branding perspective, though. If it's a new site then it will take some time (weeks/months) to stabilize in the search engine listings. Be careful that your domain name doesn't contain any trademarked terms, and that your site is in compliance with all terms of service for Google, etc. Go over the site and look for any ways that you could be shooting yourself in the foot. It sounds like you're getting too caught up with statistics, when you should probably just be concentrating on improving the site, and generating relevant high-value backlinks.
As Bill said, the search engines don't care about country specific TLDs outside of geographic/geopolitical searches. However, if you do choose to change domain names, make sure you redirect the old one to the new one either through DNS or .htaccess. I don't know how to do the former, but the latter is easy as cake if your old server runs on Apache (or IIS with the appropriate module). Redirect 301 / http://www.yournewdomain.tld Code (markup): "yournewdomain" and "tld" are placeholders. Replace them with your new domain name and the correct top level domain.
Mosts host support the move, so usually just go on live support and they'll be happy to help. Also depends on what host you have.
Register your domain and load up your files. You could use a 301 redirect but if you do then you are just telling the Search Engines you have a new address. This might not be good if in fact your old site has incurred a penalty. If it has not then there isn't much point in moving for SEO purposes. If you want to protect your new site from penalty, don't redirect, register your site in proxy, and start over.
Thank you so much for the advice. I am still confused. I have 15 pages on my old site and about 1000 backlinks that can be seen on yahoo, which I want to discontinue. Can I use the same content on the new site?The only difference on the new site is that it's going to have .com extension and new domain name. Besides that, it's the same. The only reason I am migrating is because the old site is on .us extension and it's ranking nowhere even though the site is up for 2 and half months now! Your help would be much appreciated. I have put so much efforts trying to rank this site but the results have been disappointing, and I have been hearing that it's because of the extension I have; even though this site has a powerful keywords in its domain name.
I think you need not to move your site to another domain. You need to just update you site more regularly and build more and more links and for that you can hire a Good SEO expert or if you have ample time , thne you can do it on your own.