Grow Old Gracefully (Your Website, Too)

You’ve had your website up for 7 years and you’re comfortable. Sort of like a site that wears stretchy pants and knee socks. But you realize your site isn’t all it should be - especially the fact that it isn’t getting found among the sea of competitive websites. Younger, flashier sites that are way more (inter)active than yours.

Who wants to grow old (sigh) so you pluck up your courage and become a whole new you - starting with a catchier domain name.

Stop right there: your SEO checklist

New lease on life with search engine optimization from stem to stern? CHECK!

New sex appeal with modern, eyecatching design (with good content:code ratio)? CHECK!

New user interactivity with social media and lots of clickable action items? CHECK!

Better useability with intuitive navigation and layout? CHECK!

New domain name? URRRRRHHH!!!

[that's the sound of a game show buzzer when you got the answer wrong]

You don’t want to get stuck in the Google sandbox

Lots of businesses don’t understand that changing your domain name, even after a year of having it online, is going to hurt - both your favorability with the search engines and with your visitors.

Your customers and prospects don’t want to remember a new domain name - heck, it’s hard enough to get them to recall the old domain when they hear it via word-of-mouth.

And Google doesn’t like newbie domain names; the goliath search engine sticks fledgling websites in what we in the SEO biz call “the sandbox.” You have to play there, with other infant sites, for six months or more - until Google deems you as worthy enough to rank.

The major search engines see a lot of shysters and fly-by-night operators in cyberspace they want to shut down for spamming practices. They don’t yet have a trust relationship with new sites.

So if you have an older domain name (the older the better) - rejoice! And don’t tinker with it. (Same goes for any web pages that rank well in search engine results; don’t mess with them, i.e. change headlines or metacontent.)

Permanent 301-Redirect a New Domain to Older, Trusted One

If you’re really stuck on a new domain name, make sure your webmaster does a permanent 301 redirect from it to your older domain. That way, you can use the new domain in your marketing material, but not bung up the value of your seasoned domain (ie. the Google juice it’s extracted over the years).

You plan to grow old gracefully - think the same strategy for your old, shopworn domain. It might be the best thing going for you right now when it comes to search engine placement.