TKG SEO Blog

Congratulations to my uncle, Jeff Monter for receiving Canton Advertising Club’s 2008 Advertising Person of the Year! Jeff is Vice President of Creative at Innis Maggiore Group, a local Canton advertising firm that’s just a few miles away from TKG. Jeff is one of the most creative & talented artists I know - congratulations again Uncle Jeff.

Guest Blogger: Megan Jeffery
A few weeks ago Jen shared a link to her friend Matt’s blog (it can be found on the blogroll). His writing grabbed me, (and hundreds of others - so many he had to get a dedicated server) and I have been a frequent visitor ever since. As I read his daily updates, it occured to me that his blog is very well optimized. He has links to his flickr account, a variety of music, links to other’s blogs. The beautiful photographs he uses to illustrate his writing are often labeled with the person’s name or the subject of the photo. As I read, I began to realize that this is what good, organic SEO should look like. It is not obvious, the writing is fresh and interesting, with text links that help illustrate what he is experiencing. Text links take you to what he listening to, the restaurants he enjoys and the friends surrounding him. We could all take a few pointers from Matt, and the .net would be a much nicer, cleaner place to gather information.

There is no strategy involved, just a sharing of information, the way the web was meant to be - naturally, as an SEO Specialist, this intrigued me, so I started hunting around to see what kind of impact this blog, with it’s very natural, effortless SEO, has had on the net. I was not too surprised when the blog ranked #1 for one of the names he mentions regularly, but I was surprised that it still ranked when trimmed down to a fairly competitive phrase. I did a quick check and the blog is also experiencing pretty decent link popularity, especially for a blog that was meant to be a personal blog for family updates!

There are those in the SEO world who feel that no intentional strategies for SEO purposes are appropriate - just let the chips fall where they may. I am pretty sure this particular blog is just what they had in mind.

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”

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)

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).

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”.