This guide helps you avoid the serious damage that can occur to your website rankings & traffic by improperly moving your content to a new domain name.

Step 1: Traffic Loss

Be prepared for a dip in your overall traffic. It is going to happen! However, if you do everything right you can keep the pain to a minimum. Usually your traffic will dip for 1 week to 1 month depending on the size of your site. If the risk of temporarily losing traffic does not reward the benefit of moving to a new domain name, stop right here.

Tip: Because you know your traffic will dip it is a great idea to open or increase budget on a PPC campaign. Target your top performing organic keywords and use exact keyword matches so you don’t pay for non converting clicks.

Step 2: 301 Redirects

301 redirect your old domain to your new domain. Do not use a 302 redirect. 301 tells the search engines that this is a permanent move while 302 would mean the move is only temporary.  You need to 301 redirect each page to its corresponding page on the new domain. Do not simply redirect all pages to the new homepage. The only time you should redirect to your homepage is if no other content on the new site is a good match.

When moving a large site you may want to move one section to test that you are doing it correctly before messing up the entire site only to find out too late that you missed a step!

Tip: Google recommends that you keep the 301 redirects up for at least 180 days. I would highly suggest you simply keep them live forever. You can remove your images, videos, etc.. off the server but keep the 301’s live.

Tip: You should also create custom 404 pages that suggest the user visit your new site.

Tip: In Google Webmaster Central go to Site Configuration > Change of Address – It will tell you to add and verify your new domain; once completed you can alert Google of your domain change.

Step 3: Update Sitemaps
In your webmaster accounts resend a copy of your OLD sitemap to Google, Bing & Yahoo (For Yahoo use the Site Explorer Tool). The submission pages are within Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Center. The search engines will crawl your old urls and be notified of your move much quicker than waiting to be indexed again.

After that is done, create and submit a sitemap for your new domain on its webmaster accounts as well.

Tip: Use sites like http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ if you do not already have an xml sitemap created.

Step 4: Update Your Links
Make sure that all your internal links were actually updated to the new domain. This can be more of a pain if you used absolute instead of relative file paths. However, most editing tools like Dreamweaver have a find and replace function for mass edits.

Once your internal links are in order start updating external links that are pointing to your old domain. You are never going to get everyone to switch but if you prepare a nice stock email you will be surprised at how many will update their link to your new domain.

Use  Yahoo’s Site Explorer & Google Webmaster tool’s “Links To Your Site” section to find external sites that link to you. Both sites allow you to export the data to excel which is very handy.

Also, do not forget your paid directory links. Make sure your Yahoo Directory and Best Of The Web Directory links are pointing to your new domain.

Tip: Your analytics package is also a great source to find external links. Export a list of the top 100 (or more) sites sending traffic to your site and reach out to them.

Tip: Free tools like ISS Toolkit (Super Sweet) and the Xenu’s Link Sleuth should be used to make sure there are no broken links or images on your site and a whole host of other issues that may have happened in your move.

Step 5: Monitor
Be sure to monitor your webmaster accounts for search engine crawl errors and correct any issues you see immediately.

Step 6: Link Building
You really would be smart to start a link building campaign to coincide with your new domain launch. At the very least you should do the following as well as updating as many old links as possible in step 5.

Write and Distribute an Article – (low cost) easily net 20 to 40 links to your new domain.
Use Social Bookmarking –  (Free)- Google some “Do Follow” bookmarking lists and add your site.
Submit a Press Release – Use PR Web or another distribution service. Go with the basic package all you really care about are the links.
Use Web 2.0: Create or update your blog on Wordpress.org, Squidoo, Hubpages…etc. to include a link to your new site.

These simple and low cost techniques should easily net you 60 to 80 new links to your site and that is being conservative. Link Building and SEO Experts can of course offer you a more robust and custom made campaign.

Tip: Focus a good portion of your new links to internal pages. Search engines will have no problem with your homepage but can always use a good reason to dive deeper into your site.

Step 7: Pat Yourself On The Back!
By doing the steps above you will have made moving to a new domain name a piece of cake.

If you have any questions about a step or anything that was not covered please post in the comments bellow. I hope this helps save you from some of the domain change horror stories I have heard over the years.

If you enjoyed this article please RT and follow us on twitter @authoritydomain

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As advances in technology move forward, the needs of online users change, the methods of advertising also experience an evolution over time. One of these more recent advertising methods has been link building. There are a lot of varieties of link building. Moreover, there are new rules that have to be followed to ensure the success of this method. But the benefits hardly ever change.

Link Building has great benefits and that is the reason why more and more number of website owners want to get it incorporated in their SEO process. The practice of link building is simply getting other websites to link back to yours. Despite how very important it is though, most webmasters don’t have a genuine link building campaign because it’s typically a very lengthy task to perform. But don’t let this be a reason you don’t do at least some link building for your website. You’d be doing your company a huge disservice by overlooking this vital Search Engine Optimization step.

1. It puts you in search engines.

Unless you’re found in Google, Yahoo, and MSN, your online business is non-existent. It also doesn’t help if you’re found a lot of pages away in search results. Your main goal should be at least among the top 10 on the targeted keywords you’re using. Research says that online users click the first website in the list, believing it’s the most relevant answer to their query.

2. Links make your site – and the internet – more usable, and useful.

Links provide simple site navigation between documents and other website’s. In addition to surfing through sites, links substantially increase the usability of site information since words within an article, website, blog, etc… can be linked – or extended out in a tree-like manner.

3. Links Create Direct Traffic. More links = more traffic.

Clicking a link from a trusted source is one of the most popular ways for people to find a new website. If a user is on a website they trust, they are likely to follow links that it recommends or that a user finds interesting – or at the least, users will follow links that make the destination site appear to provide some valuable information.

4.Links Build User Trust in You – Word-of-mouth is the best advertising there is.

If users see a link to you on a popular or respected site, their level of trust in what you say or what you offer is likely to be higher.

5. Cheap One-way linking

Cheap Linking can come from many methods and provide many benefits. Writing articles and submitting to article directories can be one method.  Posting your own blog with a link back to yours, link directories and social networking sites are all great places to link onto with no or very little costs involved, from which all highly benefit your site traffic.

6.Links Build higher page ranks

PageRank is still a major factor, the major search engines consider when determining where  websites are ranked. The reasoning is simple: if you have many links pointing to your site from other unique sites, your content probably is quality, important information. Every webpage is given its own PageRank. Your PageRank will be determined by the PR of the pages that link to you.

7. Links Tell Search Engines and Users What Your Pages Are About

To determine what a web page is about search engines look at a few critical elements on a web page, but just as important is the text used in links that point to your page – from within your site and from outside sites. If you could describe yourself in two words, what would they be?

8.Links Are Trackable and Provide Market Intelligence – Find out who, what, where, when, why, how – and use it.

There are a few methods of determining who links to you, and this information can be very valuable in providing market intelligence such as;
- competitor strengths/weaknesses (find out who links to them, request a link)
- consumer/user opinion (what people are saying about you/competitors on blogs/forums)
- potential suppliers (industry insiders who liked/linked to your site)
- source of testimonials
- reveals potential PR hazards (negative posts/links)
To determine who links to you, you can first check your traffic logs for ‘referrers’. Once seeing who has generated some traffic for you, you can find out whom the search engines have listed that link to you.

9.Links Reveal Strategic Partnerships

Upon reviewing your traffic logs or doing a simple link check on any of the major search engines (as mentioned above) you may encounter some sites that link to you that can reveal sources of mutual benefit, such as;
- marketing partnerships (develop reciprocal ad campaign)
- service or product suppliers
- potential employees
- potential contractors
- or for support/education/help

10.Links Are Assets – They Add Value to Your Property

Your website is your internet property, and it has value. What gives your website saleable value is the amount of traffic the site can generate. As we’ve shown, links are one of the most important factors in generating substantial website traffic, search engine rankings, trust, publicity, market intelligence and more. A substantial link network offers significant value to the overall package when determining a website’s value.

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Are you always on the go just like me? Use your iPhone to keep yourself updated on your current SEO. These 4 iPhone apps are easy to use, and very helpful for professionals who travel often but need to stay in the know.

Pokeseo

Pokeseo is a great app that lets you check Google PR (Page Rank) for any domain. You can also use this to check the number of Backlinks for Google, Yahoo, Bing and AOL. Use the “email this report” feature to save all your data.

iSEO Tools

iSEO Tools has three features. A SERP Analyzer, inbound links analyzer, and Web directories. The SERP Analyzer will tell you on what page your keyword is found on Google. The inbound links analyzer uses Yahoo Site Explorer service. A great way to analyze how many links you have for your domain. The last feature shows you a list of web directories. You can use this option to submit a link for your domain to increase your link popularity.

SEOIT

SEOIT will analyze a domains >page source elements, HTML source code, title, meta keywords, meta description, meta tags, body text, stop word ratio, word count, meta phrases, length of phrases, stop word removal, anchors and link text, complete link list, complete anchor tag, anchor inner text, images/alt tags, back links, inbound links from Google. This application is very easy to use, and keeps everything well organized.

SEO Search Ranking

SEO Search Ranking App uses a graph SERP Analyzer. This gives you the ability to monitor your current and past rankings. Being able to monitor the change in rankings on the go is very useful. This application also lets you monitor an unlimited number of keywords. You can organize each report by domain categories under “My Domains”.

Pricing:

SEO IT – .99 cents
SEO Search Ranking – $1.99
Pokeseo – .99 cents
iSEO Tools – .99 cents

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We are consistently looking for new and inexpensive ways to market our E-commerce sites.  Like many E-commerce sites, we operate on a shoestring budget, and are always looking for the least expensive ways to promote our site.  We have found one of the best ways to market the site, with a very small budget is to partner up with the manufacturers that we represent on our sites.  Here are three ways to utilize the skills and services that manufacturers offer to their dealers.

1) Print Advertisements-Many manufacturers will run print advertisements in trade publications.  Ask the manufacturers that you work with if you can be involved with these publications, by paying a small fee to have your website listed on the print advertisements.  Your website can be listed as a place that sells the manufacturers products.  In return, this is also helping the manufacturer pay for the advertisement. 

2) Website Listing on Manufacturer’s Site-If the manufacturer has a website with online retailers listed, typically a “where to buy this product online” or “online retailers” section, ensure your website is listed.  This is a free link that the manufacturer should have no problem putting up.  Some manufacturers will only put your link up on their site once you have reached a pre-set yearly sales number.  Ask the manufacturer what the requirements are to have your link listed. 

3) Promotions  - Find out from your sales representative what promotions the manufacturer is running and when they will occur.  Most of the time they will have it listed in a special area on their website, possibly homepage, or in a print publication.  Ask to be involved in the promotion, to ensure that customers know they can take advantage of the promotion by purchasing from your website. 

Manufacturers are always willing to work with you to help sell more products.  Typically, they have a marketing team in place, and are more than helpful.  Utilize the resources they provide to you for being their dealer.   We have found the above three ideas are a great to start to working with manufacturers on the marketing of our sites.

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A lot of people ask me which SEO’s they should follow on Twitter. I have constructed a list of 40 top notch individuals and loaded them into TweepML. So now you can auto follow them with once click! Simply click the link bellow to add them all at once.

Top SEO Experts On Twitter (click link to auto follow them)

These experts will keep you up to date with the latest and most cutting edge SEO. For those of you who enjoy monotony you can manually follow them the old fashion way from the list bellow.

I am certain that I have inadvertently left someone deserving off of this list. Feel free to suggest them in the comments bellow.

PS. Yes I included myself in the list..Shameless..I know right!

1. Daron Babin
   http://twitter.com/SEORockstars
2. Andy Beal
   http://twitter.com/andybeal
3. Andy Beard
   http://twitter.com/AndyBeard
4. Greg Boser
   http://twitter.com/GregBoser
5. Jim Boykin
   http://twitter.com/webuildpages
6. The Caveman
   http://twitter.com/the_caveman
7. Christoph Cemper
   http://twitter.com/cemper
8. Ryan Clark
   http://twitter.com/linkbuildr
9. Brian Chappell
   http://twitter.com/brianchappell
10. Bruce Clay
    http://twitter.com/BruceClayInc
11. Matt Cutts
    http://twitter.com/mattcutts
12. Rand Fishkin
    http://twitter.com/randfish
13. Vanessa Fox
    http://twitter.com/vanessafox
14. Todd Friesen
    http://twitter.com/oilman
15. Patrick Gavin
    http://twitter.com/PatrickGavin
16. AJ Ghergich
    http://twitter.com/authoritydomain
17. Michael Gray
    http://twitter.com/graywolf
18. Mike Grehan
    http://twitter.com/mikegrehan
19. Gypsy
    http://twitter.com/theGypsy
20. Halfdeck
    http://twitter.com/Halfdeck
21. Rae Hoffman
    http://twitter.com/sugarrae
22. Julie Joyce
    http://twitter.com/juliejoyce
23. Todd Malicoat
    http://twitter.com/stuntdubl
24. Lee Odden
    http://twitter.com/leeodden
25. Melanie Nathan
    http://twitter.com/melanienathan
26. Dave Naylor
    http://twitter.com/DaveNaylor
27. Gyutae Park
    http://twitter.com/Gyutae
28. Branko Rihtman
    http://twitter.com/neyne
29. Jeremy Schoemaker
    http://twitter.com/shoemoney/
30. Barry Schwartz
    http://twitter.com/rustybrick
31. Bill Slawski
    http://twitter.com/bill_slawski
32. Ann Smarty
    http://twitter.com/seosmarty
33. Danny Sullivan
    http://twitter.com/dannysullivan
34. Brett Tabke
    http://twitter.com/btabke
35. Ralph Tegtmeier
    http://twitter.com/fantomaster
36. Dan Thies
    http://twitter.com/danthies
37. Aaron Wall
    http://twitter.com/aaronwall
38. Eric Ward
    http://twitter.com/ericward
39. Gerald Weber
    http://twitter.com/the_gman
40. Jill Whalen
    http://twitter.com/jillwhalen

Update:
Laura Thieme
http://twitter.com/bizresearchlmt

Top SEO Experts On Twitter
(click link to auto follow them)

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A client recently asked me to put together a cheat sheet to show to Social Media naysayers. As I was doing the research I started asking myself, why would any brand NOT engage? Have a gander at these 10 data points:

1. According to a global Nielsen survey of 26,486 Internet users in 47 markets, consumer recommendations are the most credible form of advertising
2. There were nearly 116 million US user-generated content consumers in 2008, along with 82.5 million content creators. Both numbers are set to climb significantly by 2013 (eMarketer, February 2009)
3. 86.9% of respondents said they would trust a friend’s recommendation over a review by a critic, while 83.8% said they would trust user reviews over a critic. (Marketing Sherpa, July 2007)
4. 81% of online holiday shoppers read online customer reviews (Nielson Online, December 2008)
5. 74% agree-including 14% who strongly agree-that they choose companies and brands based on what others say online about their customer service experiences, the survey shows. (Society for New Communications Research, May 2008)
6. Mobile user-generated content will generate $5.7 billion worldwide in 2012, up from $576 million in 2007. (“Mobile Social Networking: Opportunities & Forecasts 2008-2013,” Juniper Research, October 2008)
7. By 2020, 84% of marketers agree that building customer trust will become marketing’s primary objective, and 82% agree that collaboration with customers will prevail over marketing. (1to1 Media survey of the 1to1 Xchange panel, April 2008)
8. Online businesses lose as many as 67% of consumers due to a lack of online product information. (Allurent, January 2008)
9. In a study of online UK retailers, 59% reported that the consumer-generated activity leads to better search engine optimization. (eMarketer, 2008)
10. 75% of people don’t believe that companies tell the truth in advertisements. (Yankelovich)

among 78% of the study’s respondents. (Nielsen, “Word-of-Mouth the Most Powerful Selling Tool”, October 2007)

With this compelling data in mind, think about Social Media in regards helping your business fill these business objectives:

1. Market research and business intelligence
2. Customer/partner education
3. User groups
4. Product innovation
5. Competitive analysis
6. Peer‐based support, education and innovation/evolution
7. Company‐wide collaboration/learning solution
8. Thought leadership/leads
9. Workplace alignment, communication & training
10. Organic/White Hat SEO Link Building

Now think about the data points above and these 10 business drivers above. Is there any business that is lacking in at least one of those areas? Is your business lacking? Now think about this:

“Social Networking & Social Media Ad Spending to Rise 13.2% in 2010 to 1.3 Billion!”
-eMarketer

I came away from my task yesterday convinced, now more than ever, that all companies should be utilizing Social Media to some degree. I am not saying go full bore if you haven’t engaged yet, but if anything it is time to dip the toes in to the Social Media waters to see how warm it is. The data is saying now is the time, especially with the Wall Street Journal and CNN claiming the recession is at an end.

@derekshowerman

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There are a few changes worth noting in the Search Engine world. The biggest piece of news is the possible merger of Yahoo and Microsoft.

It will take a while to iron out all the legal details, but the partnership looks promising. From the June 2009 comScore Report: Microsoft has 8.4% of the search market, and Yahoo has 19.6%. So combined they have a better chance at competing with Googles 65.0%.

Google also has some news to report. Its new search software “caffeine” is currently in beta testing.

You can preview it here. No cosmetic changes will be made, only the code for their search engine infrastructure has been re-written. This has been done to enhance indexing speed, size, and all around search accuracy. The release of Google Caffeine is well timed. What do you think?

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Like everyone else you are probably writing unique high quality articles and submitting them to relevant sites and article directories. You’re done right? That’s all there really is to do right? Wrong!

There are a myriad of option for you to make your article stand out from the crowd and yes produce more links.

1) Reach out to the REAL websites who republish your articles.
At first blush, these seem simple and obvious- but think about the possibilities for just a second. Bear with me I promise it will be worth it. Right now you are submitting your quality articles to the same list of directories as everyone else. By contacting websites who already willingly republished your articles in the past you can establish a relationship with them.

The Idea is to give that website additional unique QUALITY content so long as they allow you to place a few links inside the article. In a short time you should be able to build up a really nice list of REAL websites that you can push content to in exchange for links while everyone else is playing in the same article directory sandbox.

Bonus Tip 1:
What’s that you say? You are new to this game and not a lot of REAL people have republished your articles yet? No worries. Simply head on over to Ezine Article’s expert authors section:
http://ezinearticles.com/?type=experts. Look at all those articles these authors are publishing! You can simply search for who is republishing their articles and contact that site to offer your unique content.

It gets even better. http://ezinearticles.com/?type=txcat&cat=Internet-and-Businesses-Online:SEO – You can actually go into any category on Ezine articles and see the top authors in that category. So now you can search for who is republishing articles in your niche.

Bonus Tip 2:
When searching for who is republishing articles? Simply search for “The title of the article” in quotes. You can also add in the author name in quotes as well. You will have the best luck with Yahoo usually but try Bing & Google as well.

2) Interlink Your Articles
Once you have a relationship with these site owners and are publishing articles consistently on their sites, be sure you link out to your other articles on different websites. By sending links to your articles from unique sites you make those pages much more powerful and therefore the links they give you more powerful.

3) Use Social Media
Make sure to setup a twitter account for your efforts. You can retweet each of your articles that a webmaster agrees to publish. Because your twitter post will be unique and relevant to your niche you should attract followers with similar interest. This can send traffic and links to the site who post your content. You can use this fact as leverage when trying to get content up. If you can send links and traffic to a site owner plus provide them with unique relevant content who would say no to that?

4) Turn your article into an RSS feed

Use sites like http://feedity.com/ or http://www.feed43.com/ to turn any webpage into an RSS feed.  Then ping that RSS feed with http://pingomatic.com/ and submit to directories like http://www.feedagg.com/.

5) Create a podcast and a slideshow from your article
Turn your article into a podcast. Got a microphone handy? Then you can read your article and create a podcast. http://podcastingscout.com/ has some great tips to get started. Once you have a podcast you can submit it to tons of directories as well. As for the Slideshow, I would suggest using http://www.slideshare.net/. It is a fantastic tool, easy to use and could be a subject for later blog post.

6) Make a video from your article
Using free software like http://www.jingproject.com/ you can easily create a nice looking video using the slideshow you created with SlideShare or even PowerPoint .

7) Create an eBook out of your most popular articles.
This will be fairly easy to do as the content is already written and just needs to be repurposed into a 20 to 40 page eBook. You can then give the eBook away free on your site and use it as link bait.

Ping me on Twitter if you have any questions. Or post your comments below, we look forward to reading and commenting back. Also, feel free to share your ideas as well if I happened to be remiss and miss a glaring option.

@authoritydomain

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Microsoft’s Bing.com has a few features that make searching more convenient. Especially for someone that uses Search Engines as much as I do.

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Let’s face it, whether you love them or hate them, url shorteners are here to stay. However, all url shorteners are not created equal. The shortening service you choose to use can have a big impact on your site’s link building and rankings.

The problem with some of the services out there is that they don’t provide a clean 301 redirect to your content. 301 redirects tell search engines to permanently redirect to your content. Instead they provide a 302 redirect which tells search engines that this a temporary situation which causes a lot of issues with most search engines.

Even if you just use short urls on twitter which nofollows the links you post anyway, you still need to pick a url shortener that 301 redirects because once you post a link on twitter it can end up anywhere.

If your shortened url gets republished all over the web (and isn’t that the point) wouldn’t it be nice to get the credit?

Bellow are 4 sites you should never use because they do not provide a clean 301 redirect:

• twurl.nl – 303 redirect
• hex.io – 302 redirect
• eweri.com – 302 redirect
• fon.gs – 302 redirect

If you look around you will surely find more examples. (Please post any examples you find in the comment section) Also watch out for services that use a bar or frames to display ads etc. Besides being tacky they usually are not providing a clean redirect.

Good Examples: Each of these services provides a clean 301 redirect

• tinyurl.com
• bit.ly
• ff.im
• is.gd

In summary, make certain when you do use a url shortening service that you only use one that 301 redirects. When in doubt simply enter a shortened url in a header checker like http://www.seoconsultants.com/tools/headers.asp

Follow this simple advice and when your Twitter post hits the big time your content actually get the credit it deserves.

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