Changing your domain name, redirecting links and SEO implications

So picture the situation – you have an existing website (domain) which you want to completely redevelop, maybe to take on a more professional feel or maybe you just want to develop a common look and feel across all of your websites.

Generally as long as you don’t start wiping out large sections of your page copy, start removing page titles or make sweeping changes to your internal linking, then this shouldn’t be a huge problem.

But what if you also want to change the domain name as well? For instance, maybe your current domain name was good when your company was smaller, and now you need something that better reflects your services or status! However, your current domain has say a PR3 status and a (potentially large) number of links pointing at it from other sites.

Link building and developing PR status can take a considerable amount of time and effort. Therefore, what we need is a successful method of launching a new site, while asking the search engines to associate the page rank and links of the old site, with the new site.

The best way of doing this is to use what is called a 301 redirect, which effectively tells the search engines that all queries to the old site should be directed to the new one, along with all of the links and PR. However, while a 301 redirect will instantly send all queries to the old site to the new site, it is often suggested that the process of transferring PR and links can take up to six months.

A 301 redirect is the best method of effectively shutting down one domain, while keeping the ‘juicy’ bits which will help your new domain. Other redirects such as ‘302’ redirects are frowned upon by the search engines, as they have historically been used by website hackers to redirect web surfers to pages not related to the domain the user requested. We will cover physical implementation of 301 redirects in a later discussion.

Strange SEO Findings - Part 2 (getting Google to quickly index your page)

I think I’ve noticed an interesting way to quickly new new pages or page copy indexed!

As part of my freelance work, I’ve started to manage a PPC campaign for getbiz, a uk business directory site. They are a business directory and are targeting keywords such as ‘pr companies’, ‘printing companies’ etc.

I already know enough about SEO to know how frustrating it can be when you upload new pages or page text and have to wait for ages for the page to be indexed again. Only when its indexed will you see the reward of your hard work in terms of going up (or maybe even down) the search engine rankings.

I seem to have noticed that every time I start a new PPC campaign, and target this to a landing page, then the landing page in question a. gets indexed again almost immediately, and b. seems to move through the search engine rankings!!

I’ve brought this up in a few forums and there seems to be a lot of debate as to whether I’m right. However, for the time being it seems to be working for me.

I’ll keep you posted when I start the next run of PPC for them and see if I get the same results!

Strange SEO Findings - Part 1

So recently I have been spending quite a bit of time preparing a number of “how to” guides for my blog. One of the guides I’m putting together is on developing a website structure that is

a. Good for optimisation, and provides keyword rich urls, and
b. Makes the site easy to manage as it grows.

While researching this, I had a bit of a scare! I noticed while brosing one of the sites that I am working on, that every time I entered the url as www.amstore.co.uk, the browser would automatically add a “/” to the end.

I then noticed that google was indexing the site as www.amstore.co.uk/ in its search results. Baring in mind that I have spent the last few months linking to the site without the end “/” this was a little concerning.

My heart sank at the thought that maybe the two are actually treated as completely separate urls and that all of the links I had done would be completely invalid :-(

So I jumped on a number of forums and luckily the general consensus seems to be that the urls are treated as being exactly ythe same site. Therefore, it seems not to matter which you use.

Still not 100% sure why google adds it though, so have to keep you posted when I find out more!

New SEO Client!

So, the morning has been good to me... I have a new client (doesn’t that sound a bit posh). I had a meeting with the MD of a company yesterday, who was looking for an SEO person to develop new pages (primarily page copy text) for his cd and dvd duplication company in London. It fits in well with my location but I don’t know a lot (in fact anything at all) about dvd duplication.

I can maybe see this as being a bit of an issue to start with i.e. when you work for someone full time you know all about their products and services. When you don't work in that particular industry, then you will have to do a fair bit of research into the clients industry before getting going. Maybe I need to factor this into my charges!??

About My Blog

Day 3 of free - lancing! (although technically its neither free nor does it involve lancing). I've finally decided what direction to take my blog in. Initially I was just going to use it as a collection of ramblings about my day, but I’ve now decided to use it a bit like a chronicle of all the things that I'm doing, mistakes that I make and new tools that I learn.

I'm even thinking of maybe adding some "how to" guides about SEO somewhere down the line. That would be fun wouldn’t it!! Maybe we can have online SEO parties. Or maybe instead of a flash mob we have an SEO mob, where several thousand SEO type people all turn up at the same place and then all start suddenly talking about SEO at the same time....ok maybe not then!