eSpire Marketing

One of my clients is about to make the switch from their current site and current web address to a completely updated website and a brand new URL as well. As their mentor in all things SEO and web marketing in general they are looking to me to get them ahead of the curve when the switch is finally made. There are a few things that anyone who is switching sites should consider, I will list them first and then go into greater detail later in this post.

Links- what do you do to get the links from your old site to your new one ( this is the most important part)

Search Trends- which URL is going to help you gain the most traffic through the search engines

.Com vs. .org?- believe it or not there is a difference and it helps a lot with credibility to your customers.

Okay let’s get back to the links. it is important to make sure that your new site retains as many of the links from the old site as possible. How do you know who is linking to your old site? Simple, just go to yahoo.com and enter this search query “linkdomain:www.oldsiteurl.com” from there you will have a full list of everyone who links to your old site. Contact each one of those people and ask them to link to your new site. You might not get all of the links back but the more you retain the better.

Okay now the search trends. It is important to get your next site off to the right start by establishing a strong URL. Using tools likes Google search trends you can determine which keyword is most important for you to use.
For instance, the client in question sells American Flags and I was curious as to whether we should use “America” in the url or “USA” I used Google’s search trends tool and determined that using USA was most favorable in their market. Not only will they show up easier for USA flags but they will for US flags as well. That is the difference in thousands of dollars in sales for them.
Lastly which should we use a .com website or a .org? While both types of URL’s carry the same wait for the search engines .org websites carry significantly more trust value than a .com. I chose a .org for this site for that exact reason.
All in all there are a lot of important factors when you are switching a site over to a new URL. These are some of the most important. I’m going to leave you with this last little gem. When planning on switching over url’s the earlier you can establish the domain the better. Search engines place a lot of weight on domains that have been around for the longest amount of time.