websense

After a 3 week long battle with SEDO, the domain broker through which we acquired tkg.com, it’s live! More on the battle later, but suffice it to say, customer service isn’t one of their core objectives.

So, our SEO experiment begins. We’ve benchmarked our stats some of which will be posted on Jen’s new SEO Blog, if you’re interested in seeing the impact that this domain switch has on us check it out there.

We’ve launched the domain this morning; let the link building begin!

So, lets pretend you have a moderately successful company, that generates many of it’s leads on the web. Lets also assume that this business has been online for a while, like 10+ years. All SEO’s know that lots of links get built, content gets indexed, rankings climb etc. over the course of 10 years. Your domain builds an online reputation, so to speak. So, after 10 years, this site has thousands of phrases generating really qualified traffic, some very general, some very long tail.

Then, one day, the owner of “said company” decides it’s a great idea to get a new domain. What do you, as an SEO who has already advised him that this is a really bad idea? By the way, walking out is not an option.

Well, that’s what we’ve done. I can’t believe it, but after marketing tkg.com for over 10 years, we were able to finally acquire a better domain. A few of us at TKG have been “stalking” the domain tkg.com for quite some time, and we finally got it!

How can we resist going from 15 letters to 3? Not gonna happen!

So, at the risk of our whole SEO department going AWOL, we’re doing it. We hope to be switching to the new domain early next week.

Of course, we have an elaborate scheme (I mean plan) to protect our rankings and the equity our domain has built up as much as possible. So, we’ll be running a little experiment to see just how quickly we can make this transition to our new domain.

It should be live early next week. If you feel like contributing to the cause and creating a link to the new domain tkg.com, that’d be great!

For those who are interested, we’ll be sharing the impact of this on our site, it’ll be located at tkg.com/tkgseoblog. We plan to share the whole scoop, SE rankings, Saturation, Link Pop etc. It’ll be interesting to see just how fast we can recover the traction we currently have.

What a great idea, removing all style from a site. To most of us with big egos, that love to see our logo and company look good, its really tough to see all that go away. Even though, we’re probably the only ones who really care about our own graphics.

We decided to participate in CSS Naked Day, a day to promote web standards. It’s not too late to participate if you, or your business are concerned about web standards. Follow this link to learn more about participating in CSS Naked Day.

Have you heard about SEO and want to learn more? Does your website lack traffic and visibility on the internet? You’re in luck! The Karcher Group is pleased to announce another one of our SEO seminars that will be held in the Akron area!

Please join us Friday, April 25, 2008 at the University of Akron’s Taylor Institute for Direct Marketing. The seminar is from 9 AM to 4 PM and lunch will be provided.

Here are some things that we will be covering:

Content optimization
Keyword selection
Usability and design issues
Blogging
Online public relations (PR)
And more!

We limit these classes to about 30 people because we want to give everyone some one-on-one time in smaller groups. Don’t miss this opportunity to sit down with recognized SEO industry experts to learn about search engine marketing as it applies directly to your site!

For more details and registration, visit our Akron SEO seminar page.

OK, so I gave in. We’ve been traditionally a PC shop for the last 10 years. However, over the last couple years, we’ve added a few team members that prefer Macs. And I have to admit, they’ve sold me on the usability and capabilities of Macs. To the degree that my wife and kids will hardly touch the PC at home. Needless to say, the huge beautiful monitor is a factor, but there is no doubt, the Mac makes photo and video editing much easier for a novice!

So, this afternoon we decided to pick up a couple of I Phones. Cool as heck. 3 or 4 of the guys at the office have ‘em and love ‘em. Of course, I love to spark debate because my Windows Mobile 6 device makes syncing with exchange extremely quick and easy. However the Moto Q has almost no “cool factor” when compared to an I phone. Lets be honest, a calculator with a color screen hardly looks good compared to a solid piece of brushed aluminum and glass that accesses the web, makes phone calls and takes pictures!

Now that I’ve sufficiently advertised the I phone; everyone knows Mac is known for ease of use right? Well, not if you’re a business. AT&T, the only provider through which you can legitimately get an i phone in the US, has zero accommodation for corporate accounts. So, we went to the AT&T Store, applied, got approved and received a confirmation code for our new accounts. Unlike a traditional wireless carrier, they don’t set them up at the store and hand you a working device. Rather, they hand you a couple really cool, but disconnected I phones with a “confirmation code”. Unfortunately, when you access their web activation site, via I Tunes, it has NO IDEA what to do with a “confirmation code”. Nor does anyone at AT&T, when you call them.

To try and shorten a long story, their web interface is useless for a Corporate Account. So are their sales support people available via phone calls. They told me I had to set it up personally, and they would convert it later! The person on the phone (after I had been transferred twice) actually told me we needed to “get around” the system to make this work. In other words, going into the store and setting it up before hand was a complete waste of time, which I know all small business owners love.

Now, because I wanted to keep the commitment I had made to a couple people regarding getting the I Phones, and the fact that i really enjoy cool new toys, I worked through this and got them working. But If Apple is smart, they will hopefully realize that not every business owner will be willing to spend 3 or 4 hours setting up something as simple as a new cell phone.

The syncing process for calenders etc. is awesome. If they could just carry the simple usability concept through their whole business!