TKG SEO Blog

It’s been 6 days since the site migration and MSN is the 2nd Search Engine to being indexing the new www.tkg.com pages (Yahoo! indexed within 48 hours; still waiting on Google).

Not only is MSN indexing the new domain, it’s ranking www.tkg.com for the following phrases: canton ohio web design; akron web hosting; canton web hosting

Did you notice that www.cantonerectors.com ranks for ‘canton web hosting’ because of TKG’s footer link that’s on their site? Nice!

We knew it was coming & it’s now its upon us - some of our phrases we benchmarked are completely off the map (in other words, we’re not ranking in the first 5 pages in Google), some have decreased dramatically, some haven’t changed a bit and some have actually increased a little bit.

Below illustrates our current Google ranking versus before the site migration began - the bolded phrases are no longer ranking in Google, no longer driving traffic and no longer converting visitors

I stand corrected…

In my post earlier today, I mentioned that www.tkg.com was not ranking yet - after additional research by our awesome SEO interns, we found that for some of the phrases I mentioned in my Search Engine rankings benchmark post, both the new & old domains are ranking in Yahoo! This gives us more ‘real estate’ in the SERPs (see image below) which is great for us now - but I know this will all end once everything shakes out. Hopefully we can gain additional traffic from Yahoo! while both domains are ranking..I’ve checked and so far, Yahoo! isn’t supplying any more traffic than it used to.

Almost a week after www.thekarchergroup.com became www.tkg.com, Yahoo! is going strong, indexing over 125 pages for tkg.com and nearly 800 for thekarchergroup.com…

We’re continuing to see fluctuation with the number of pages indexed with the old domain, but keep in mind that TKG.com is not yet ranking in Yahoo! (or any other SE) - when you do a search for “the karcher group”, the old domain is still showing up in the SERPs - so we’re still in “transition”.

MSN & Google have still not “reacted” to our site migration…

Without the proper site migration plan in place, terrible things could happen to your website. More importantly, without the proper 301 redirects in place, you’re most likely going to face these 5 BIG issues that arise when changing domain names:

1. Loss of Search Engine Rankings - you can run the risk of dropping out of the SERPs all-together; not fun!

2. Loss of Link Popularity - the old domain’s link popularity will be gone & you’ll have to start all over again…this is going to take awhile

3. Loss of Traffic - unless 100% of visitors to your site comes from direct traffic and they all know you’ve changed your domain name, you could lose tons of traffic from Search Engine’s (because you’re no longer ranking for anything), from direct traffic & link referrals because the old domain links are now dead and not redirecting to the new domain.

4. Loss of Conversions/Sales - this includes emails, phone calls, contact forms, online sales, newsletter sign-ups, document downloads, quote requests, etc.

5. Loss of Your Site’s Online Visibility - if your site can’t be found in the Search Engine’s, can’t be found by following a link on another site and can’t be seen by typing the old domain (since this is what people are used to) in the address bar - you’ve officially lost your online visibility

*If you learn nothing else from this entire blog:, please take away this important piece of advice: You MUST implement 301 redirects from the old domain to the new domain or else you’ll lose EVERYTHING & have to start from scratch…

Thanks to a mention by Anita Campbell on her Small Business Trends blog about our recent domain switch, I’ve had the opportunity to read the comments and have found that many wesite owners don’t understand why switching domains is such a big deal.

I realized that maybe I should have mentioned some of the big issues with switching domains within my inaugural post, as many don’t understand what can happen when you make such a big switch!

Check out 5 Reasons Why Changing Domain Names Can Make Your Web Team “Freak Out”

The bots are hitting the site; hopefully a sign that it won’t be too long before tkg.com is indexed by Google…and dare I say ranking again?!

It’s been 48 hours since the site migration and Yahoo! is the first Search Engine to react. The image below represents what pages Yahoo! has indexed for our new domain: www.tkg.com - those circled are the pages in The Karcher Group’s current site - those that aren’t are pages from the old site still in Yahoo!’s index.

Still waiting on Google & MSN…

I know it’s only been 24 hours, but I wanted to mention something unexpected that happened - the number of old domain pages that are being indexed has increased slightly and the number of old domain pages are decreasing. Check out the numbers below…

I realize that this is probably nothing to be concerned about and that its going to take at least a few weeks for everything to shake out…thought it deserved at least a mention though!