Creative agency switched from .Com to .Rocks — How a

A Fresh York web design agency took precautions when it decided to switch to a .rocks domain name.

Earlier this year, web design and marketing firm Huemor decided it wanted to switch its online presence from HuemorDesigns.com to Huemor.rocks.

“SEO folks told me I was crazy to switch from a long-standing domain,” Huemor co-founder and President Jeff Gapinski told Reglike. “Still, the fresh extension really appealed to us from a branding perspective. It summarized how we feel in one little word.”

So Huemor went forward with the switch, but wisely put a lot of effort behind it.

“We took some notable precautions with the switch, such as making sure all redirects were properly mapped out, and variations of the domain name were taken care of (huemorrocks.com or huemor.com for instance),” Gapinski stated.

The firm mapped out every page on its site and planned what pages these would correspond to on the huemor.rocks domain. This was more work than a full-site 301 redirect, but it paid off; Gapinksi notes that the firm didn’t see any noticeable search ranking problems.

To make the switch easier, the firm also stuck with its @huemordesigns.com email addresses.

Despite the effort required, Gapinski is happy with the results.

“As a creative services agency, the extra flair helps us stand out from the very first impression,” he stated. “Those who are less familiar with the .rocks TLD don’t have issues since we’ve essentially created ‘fallbacks’ between our old name and the variants.”

Huemor’s switch to Huemor.rocks is an interesting case study for a fresh domain name. Heumor has the best possible .com domain name, Heumor.com, but still went with .rocks since it believes it enhances its brand.