Thinking about changing blogspot domain to customized domain

[Maya01]

I have heard so much stuff about if get my own domain it will not be a postitive experience. Would my page rank be decreased. Has anyone done it whats your expereince. What are the Pro's and Con's please tell me

thanx

[seekingff]

check out this post on the same topic with a lot of good feedback.
Benefits of your own domain?

[WhoJayBe]

I have done it all... I have had a .blogspot blog then switched to a custom domain and then transferred to a self-hosted Wordpress blog, etc...

Honestly, you should have gotten a custom domain towards the beginning because say you built up your stats on your .blogspot.com, all that goes down the drain... don't get me wrong, you can redirect your traffic but no more pagerank, alexa rating, etc for your domain...

[QuirkyJessi]

Yes, you will lose all your current stats, but it's not 'that' bad and the process of switching over is actually a cinch. Better to do it now before you continue to build, though.

And you can help catch your PR back up by doing a few things. Contact Technorati after the change and let them know you've changed domains. They can't give you all your backlinks or anything, but they'll merge/connect your own domain with the new one and give you a boosted number. Contact anyone who has you in their blog rolls and have them update their links. Anywhere else that you can contact about the change, go ahead and let them know to update their links as well. It'll start creating new backlinks for you at your new domain (in addition to making sure you redirect your traffic from old links, too).

[rutgerskevin]

I too wish I would have started on my own domain, but what are you going to do. You WILL lose your pagerank. There is no getting around this. Set up your blogger account to re-direct to your new domain site, and you will lose very few visitors.

Good luck--ultimately this will be a good thing for your blog.

[Maya01]

Thankyou for your advice i've decided not to switch actually! i don't think really need to at this point i don't want to loose my page rank

[QuirkyJessi]

Originally Posted by Maya01

Thankyou for your advice i've decided not to switch actually! i don't think really need to at this point i don't want to loose my page rank

The longer you wait, though, the harder it's going to be to rebuild all those links and such that created your page rank. When I did my switch, I was back to my current PR 3 within one update....didn't lose anything at all because I put in the effort and got it taken care of. If you wait a long time, though, it's not going to be as easy to rebuild.

[Habitat]

Switch over its worth it in the long run..I'd do it in a heartbeat!

[BarryMorris]

Do it, DO it, DO IT!

[cipals15]

Seth Godin and Lorelle was able to maintain high traffic even if they are on a free hosting service. If you want a domain, try using it for another niche. Explore!