TKG SEO Blog

1997 - 2008 - Stalking TKG.com

April 17th - We Purchased TKG.com from SEDO
April 22nd - SEDO Receives Payment
April 23rd - SEDO Receives Authorization Code from Seller
April 30th -
8:30am - We Finally Gain Control of TKG.com from SEDO
9:15am - Propagation Happened Super Quick - TKG.com is Live
2:30pm - Google Hasn’t Indexed the New Domain Yet (I know it’s really early, but I’m anxious)

There are 3 issues to monitor when migrating a site from one domain to another: your website’s index, your links and the redirects from the old site to the new. To help monitor these, we are leveraging Google’s Webmaster Tools.

When I first heard that Geoff wanted to switch over to an entirely new domain name, I suggested we use Google’s Webmaster Tools as a resource to help us in the migration. Recently Google posted an entry on the Webmaster Central Blog entitled “Best Practices When Moving Your Site“.

One piece of the advice we found helpful was to keep both sites in Google’s Webmaster Tools to make sure that our 301 redirects were being crawled properly. This is a really nice feature to have. We are spot checking the site for problems but with the crawlers help, it will be a lot easier to spot these potential problems. The other advice we took was to upload a new sitemap. We are going to watch the sitemap to see which files get crawled first and observe the time it will take for the site to get indexed as good as before (about 435 pages). There are some key metrics we are watching throughout this transition with Google’s Webmaster Tools. Here are the things we are watching:

1. Our links - Will any external links “transfer over” and will our sitelinks stay the same
2. Index - see how fast our site will be indexed again
3. Search Engine Rankings - How will this affect our rankings

So, do you think we are crazy for doing this? The Karcher Group domain had a lot of years under it’s belt along with all those links coming in. We are excited to have the new domain though and will post more details of this transition soon, so check back!

We have the benchmarks in place and the new site is live – now how do we make sure we don’t fall off the face of the Earth…more specifically, how do we make sure that Google still finds us?

We put an “over the top” plan into action to help cover all of our bases, just in case something went horribly wrong…

1. 301 redirects via mod-rewrite for all thekarchergroup.com URLs to their corresponding tkg.com pages
2. Update the high priority (top referrals, high PR, authoritative, etc) sites that are already linking to us to our new tkg.com domain
3. Submit an optimized press release announcing the new domain
4. Request that all TKG employees update or add links to tkg.com from their personal blogs, social media profiles, etc
5. Initiatives via Google Webmaster Tools (Corey will explain in detail later)
6. Reach out to industry & influential friends that could help out by way of a link (ok, I admit - this sounds a little like cheating, but if you think about it, this is done all the time for the sole purpose of increasing link popularity, traffic & rankings - at least we’re doing it as part of an educational experiment).

You probably think that since I’ve provided our competitors with our traffic trends and some of our top referring/converting phrases, that I might as well relinquish all of our conversion data as well…
I’m providing the next best thing to actual numbers - you get percentages and if you want to take the time to figure out what the numbers are, then you deserve to know.

I’m running the risk of going overboard on benchmarking traffic; I wanted to set a trend so that we could follow trends instead of focusing on a slight decrease here and there, so we’ll be following this for awhile after launching www.tkg.com. This information was gathered using ClickTracks Analytics.

Let me preface this by stating I’m not obsessed with link popularity, but I definitely get nervous if it’s trending downwards – so we have to benchmark this and make any necessary adjustments/fixes.
Benchmarking the Search Engine saturation will give us a little bit of insight into how well the Search Engine’s handle our switch to www.tkg.com - this will be interesting. I benchmarked both tkg.com & thekarchergroup.com to ensure I’m covering all the bases.

Data as of April 24th, 2008:

I started the benchmarking process with our Search Engine rankings in the top 3 because these are my pride and joy (I don’t have any kids yet, so it’s ok for me to say that).

I realize I’m exposing some of our current top-referring & converting phrases to our competitors and of course I had to make sure this was alright with the boss – but it makes sense for me to share everything we experience in case there is another SEO-er out there that has their boss come to them with the same scary domain switch idea. Plus, I’m up for the challenge of giving this information to our competitors and attempting to maintain high rankings regardless.

With that said, here’s where we stood for some of our top referring & converting phrases on April 23rd, 2008 - 1 week before the domain change:

I’m not a writer by any stretch of the imagination; however, something sparked me to start blogging - well actually, my boss is making me, but I think I might enjoy it…

Geoff Karcher, who is a friend & owner/President/head honcho at the company I work for (The Karcher Group - which moving forward will be affectionately referred to as just: TKG) decides after 10 years of building a brand, establishing domain longevity, increasing link popularity, improving Search Engine rankings, etc. to completely change our domain! As the Web Marketing manager, I’m freaking out, but I have to pull myself together because this is happening IMMEDIATELY…I’m talking less than 1 week.

I expressed my frustration with this instantaneous change and offered several appropriate ease-into-it SEO recommendations to no avail, so I’m considering not benchmarking anything – no rankings, no link popularity – NOTHING, and just seeing where the cards fall.
Well…this backfired!

Not only is our SEO team benchmarking EVERYTHING – I’ve been nominated to share the impact this domain change has on our site in the form of clever & informative blog updates… Thus, the reason/”spark” for TKG’s new SEO Blog.

I’m excited about the change from www.thekarchergroup.com to www.tkg.com and know that it’s best for the company in the long run. Since I take a personal interest in getting our site to the top of the SERPs, I’m extremely nervous & on edge about what this will do to our Search Engine rankings.

I’ll end my inaugural post by quoting my fearless leader: “this is an SEO’s worst nightmare”.