Now that the dust has settled since the domain switch 9 months ago, it’s time to shake things up again with a new look for TKG.com – in addition to our new look, we also implemented new & optimized URLs (which required lots and lots of custom redirects, thanks again to our IT team).

Back in December, we launched our updated custom CMS which allows our web marketing team make on-the-fly page additions, content changes, image updates, and all other kinds of cool things.

Another highlight includes our Web design portfolio that incorporates new Flash elements.

Coming soon – a brand new domain for our SEO seminars!

Fox 8 News, here in Cleveland, Ohio announced that they have a brand new domain. Being familiar with domain transfers, I was curious to see how they handled this task.

First, I went straight to Search Engine Saturation to see if the Search Engine’s were still indexing the old site — Google is still indexing the old domain www.myfoxcleveland.com and seeing 15,800 pages. Not surprisingly, Yahoo! continues to index the old domain and sees 17,485 pages along with MSN 22,100.

Next – how are they handling redirects? As I’ve discussed in the past, redirects are imperative for usability as well as SEO & rankings. Congrats to Fox 8 News – they have a 301 redirect that’s directing the Search Engines and traffic to the new domain which should help soften any rankings changes they might see during this time.

Here’s the big test – are the redirects implemented appropriately so that usability isn’t affected – oh boy, this isn’t good…

ALL (and by ALL I mean the 25 or so I tested) of the pages being indexed by the Search Engine’s are redirecting to the new domains homepage – yikes! This by all means isn’t the WORST case scenario, but it definitely isn’t BEST case.

Picture this, you have the school closing section of the old domain bookmarked so you can quickly check in the mornings if your kids have school or your friend sent you a link to a news story on the old domain – now when you go to visit those links, you get taken here: www.fox8.com and are forced to search all over again for that news piece or section of the site you  wanted to visit.

Ideally, each individual page would redirect to the corresponding article within the site which would help – I know, I know, this is a huge undertaking and might not be the best use of someone’s time.  The next-best-thing would be to look into the stats of the domain (before transferring it) to see what pages/sections of the site got the most traffic and which pages had the most entries into the site. Having this information and being able to implement custom 301 redirects to each area of the new domain would greatly help usability and keep visitors to the site engaged, instead of being frustrated and leaving.

It’s not too late Fox 8 News to implement those custom 301s!

As some people feel their way through the sometimes confusing world of marketing and SEO, it may make sense to think of SEO as GREEN marketing! I know people are probably already tired of hearing “green” this and “green” that, but let’s think about this: traditional marketing uses an awful lot of resources, both natural and man powered.  Television commercials that aim to reach a tiny percentage of their viewing audience cost thousands, if not millions of dollars to produce. They use a lot of energy, from production to the actual broadcasting of the commercial. Much the same can be said about a radio spot, they cost money and natural resources to produce, and broadcast, with a very small ROI.

Do you get the Sunday paper? I enjoy looking at all the ads, but almost never rush right out and make a purchase based on what I saw in one of them.  I may clip the occasional coupon, but many times loose track of it before I get a chance to redeem it. But I throw away stacks of ads. I know, I know,  we should be recycling them, but even when they are recycled, they still take an environmental toll. All the paper, ink, expense, energy to create and print.  Thrown out with the trash, or somehow recycled into another throw-away product. Same can be said for all the local ad magazines that arrive on your doorstep.

On and on it will go, flyers, pamphlets, those nifty marketing postcards that  you spend lots of money designing and mailing.

I’m not trying to bash traditional marketing tools, because some of them work. They are costly, but they can bring  some customers through the door. So why not market your company in a new, greener fashion?  What I am getting at, in a roundabout way, is the fact that SEO and Search Marketing are more cost effective, targeted, and actually great for the environment! An email ad campaign produces no real paper to throw away.  A special  such as free shipping, with a code to punch into your keyboard is not a coupon you have to clip and loose, or end up in the trash heap.  SEO and SEM focus on the customers that are trying to find you, rather than blanketing the population of the tri-state area with flyers, hoping 20 people will come in on tenterhooks hoping to win a car with a magic plastic key (are those keys even recyclable?), and talk 4 or 5 of them into purchasing a certified pre-owned vehicle.

Instead, how about optimizing your already existing site for the specials or products you would like to promote? Get some good advice, optimize your pages for the phrases most likely to draw prospective buyers to your site.  Offer free or reduced shipping, or some other incentive. While good SEO does cost money, the ROI is much higher than traditional marketing, and the cost to our environment is much lower. Everyone wants to “go green” and many of today’s consumers are very aware of what companies have “green” policies and products. Make a point of mentioning your green policies on your site! The same people who use the web to shop for goods and services are many of the same people who are conscious of the choices they make and how they affect the world around us. Don’t have a site? Well, I am sure you have customers who have searched for you online, just in the expectation that you would have one.

Why not make 2009 the year you take your company, and your marketing GREEN!

On February 28th,  Google will end their newspaper print ad program because it

didn’t produce the desired impact.

I don’t think we needed Google to tell us that the future of print is a little rocky…

Two months ago, ex-CEO Herry Yang left Yahoo! and two days ago, Yahoo! made Carol Bartz the new CEO.  Bartz has been described as being a straight shooter, very driven, a tech veteran and a few more personal opinions you can read for yourself.

Will Bartz be able to renew Yahoo!’s threat towards Google and entice another deal from Microsoft or does she have the potential to bring Yahoo! back to what it used to be?

Everywhere you turn there is news about the economy and its poor state. Companies are laying people off, the auto manufactures are scrambling for money, some things appear to be falling apart. Even the post office is seeing slow downs. Direct mail, once an effective marketing medium, is becoming less effictive. Why is it less effective? Because it costs a lot of money to snail mail things to people who don’t want it. The article says that credit card companies are being more selective about who they are sending things to because of this. I remember when I was 17-18 years old. I had boxes and boxes of credit card offers that I had been mailed. Sometimes I would get the same one more than once. That had to cost a lot of money in postage just for me to throw away. I’m sure the trash company felt pretty secure with their business since they were the ones hauling all of it away.

On to my point. So with this downturn and the ineffective and expensive marketing, where do companies turn? The internet is where those marketing budgets should be put and here is why.

1. When people want something, they search for it. Why not reach someone when there is an interest? There is less effort to acquire a lead when the person is asking for something vs. forcing it upon them.

2. A tangible ROI. You can track everything on the internet right down to how many phone calls you received from a particular pay per click (PPC) keyword on Google or how much of a particular product was sold due to organic search traffic and how did they navigate through your site to get there.

3. Direction of your business. The internet is a great way to test new things or get feedback on existing things.

4. Cost. It’s more cost effective to do online marketing than it is to do most traditional marketing like direct mail.

Search engine marketing is a huge benefit in this day and age. There is the old adage that you can’t “beat a dead horse” but some people are stuck in time and they keep trying to get business by using marketing methods that are not getting results anymore or are not as cost effective as online. So, chin up and get with the times, the outlook will be much better then.