The Ups and Downs of a Domain Move
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A week ago I changed the domain of my blog from douglaskarr.com to marketingtechblog.com. The move has been very effective (already) from a Search Engine Optimization standpoint.
Domain Change for Search Engine Optimization works… quickly
Across the board, my site is now ranked #1 for marketing technology or marketing technology blog and moved up to page 3 for marketing blog. That’s the pop I was looking for.
Disadvantages of Domain Change
The enormous disadvantage of a domain change is that, aside from Search Engines, very few third party services will see the domain change and automatically update your site. Technorati required that I write support. They picked up the new domain right away, but their system doesn’t have a means of combining or updating a url because their system is domain name based.
Alexa is updating automatically as my traffic increases for the new domain over the other. The disadvantage of this, of course, is that I took a huge hit on Alexa ranking - which is used by multiple ad services to properly price ads based on traffic. If you really want a steal, you should buy up the AdToll ad in the top right corner right now… the pricing is based on a site with significantly less ranking than mine.
Google Analytics was great, it captured all the stats and allows the user to update the domain on the existing account so the stats are seamlessly applied. GetClicky (an outstanding blog Analytical solution) allows a domain change but it appears I lost stats for the couple days the account wasn’t updated for the new domain.
There are quite a few other services out there that needed updated as well, I’m figuring them out as I go! Ultimately, the move was an outstanding decision. I believe it will result in many more hits from search engines and it will also distance this blog from a personal one to a professional one.
I moved http://www.Indy-Biz.com several times, from blogger to Lorraineball.com to its current and final home. I think the short term dip in traffic was worth it to get it named correctly.
Did you post any notes to on-line news sources about the change?
No, I sure didn’t. Did that help you?
Doug
I still find little things here and there that I have to tweak. Just part of the process I guess.
I still stand by my reasoning of do it now while it’s still early. Imagine making the switch 10 years from now.