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Moving from Pathos-Seo.com to DIYSiteSeo.com

Filed Under: Planning your Website

Today I am working on consolidating old websites into new ones as part of my new year's resolution. For 2017 I want to simplify my online presence by reducing the number of sites I manage.

So I am letting go of Pathos-seo.com in favor of DIYSiteSeo.com. This last domain is not as old as Pathos, but I think it's a better fit for where I want to go.

Pathos-seo.com was heavily focused on Joomla! SEO. Joomla! is not my most use CMS anymore since WordPress has progressed into the CMS area.

Pathos was registered in 2006. Now, 10 years later, I feel it's good to let go and take only the best parts with me to this new site.

Moving to a new domain

Moving to a new domain is like moving to a new house. Only thing is that it is fully digital so it's not as heavy to lift.

Steps taken:

  • Export all database content like posts, pages and links from one WordPress site via the Tools ->Export function,
  • Download the wp-content folder with all plugins and images via FTP to my local drive,
  • Import posts, pages, links, etc into the new site with the import plugin from WordPress,
  • Upload content of wp-content via FTP to the new site,
  • Change domain and site pointers in the new website from old to the new domain via a Search and Replace Plugin,
  • Update media catalog via Media from FTP plugin,
  • Check permalinks to work between old and new site,
  • Setup domain redirects from the old to the new domain and run checks again.

Next steps after the domain move

After the steps mentioned above and the redirects work it's time to take the next steps.

Changing WordPress Theme

For me, that means changing to a new WordPress theme for which I choose a Genesis Framework Child Theme called Simple Pro Theme.

It's a very clean theme that will keep the focus on the content of articles I wrote and will be writing.

As part of that focus, you will also see a lot less advertising banners and more links instead, those can and will be affiliate links if suitable.

Cleaning Up House

I am also sifting through the old articles seeing if they have become obsolete or need updates in the content of image-wise.

This house cleaning will take me a couple of days.

It's like unpacking your moving boxes and looking where to place your items in your new house.

In real life, you would of course thrown away old stuff before you move, but in this digital world, you can work the other way around.

While I go through the old articles I also need to create new featured images for them. The new theme looks better with larger width images and those are also used as thumbnails for related posts.

So besides the move, I also need to do some site renovation cleaning and making sure I correct any SEO errors.

As another part of this move, I will make it even more mobile-friendly with this new theme and by setting up AMP pages.

Domain move and site renovation

How to Find Your Best Domain Name

Filed Under: Webdesign

After a long time of inactivity on this Blog, I just got started again.
Coming back to you while setting up a new WordPress website to write some stuff about finding your best domain name.

First of all, did you do your homework on finding the right keywords?
You will need them in this process, or not :-)

You see, there a two ways to go about this domain name searching, one is to incorporate your main keyword in the domain name, like -SEO for instance.
The other one is to look for a domain name that is short and sweet and easy to remember.

Using Keywords in Your Domain Name

The best option, of course, would be to have both… like wordpressseo.net which is short, easy to remember and contains the two main keywords Joomla and SEO.
Problem with this now would be that WordPress is more protected than before and the use of WordPress in a domain name should be approved by the Automatic.

This is just an example of how you need to think about using a brand name in your domain URL.
Amazon for instance and Google will contact you and start asking you to give that domain name to them since they are the holders of this registered trademark.
So be careful if you want to do that, or get permissions first!

Better is to look for a domain name that is simple and gets the right idea and stickiness to it, like alledia.com (now Joomlaschak.com) which is short, sounds good an is through its website content is now seen as one of the best sources for Joomla SEO.

As you can see, there is no Joomla and no SEO in the domain name itself, it is the content that works to boost its visitors and rankings in the SERPs.

Google doesn't care much about domain names Yahoo and Bing.com however still give you some points for having keywords in your domain.
I have a website about Network Documentation (I am an ICT Manager in my Daily work…)  and it used to rank nr one in Bing.com and nr three in Yahoo, just because of the domain name….

I checked Google as well, but could not find it n the first 10 ! pages… so I need to do a lot of work there (it's a now a WordPress site and I am still learning SEO for WordPress as I go along)

Did you also see the main competition? and yes, networkdocumentation.com was already taken so they have a head start on me.
For my own domain name, I had to do a re-inclusion request at Google, since it was a spam site before I got it.
So here is a tip: if you have found a nice domain name and it is free! (check that first with your hosting provider) go to www.archive.org and use the “Wayback machine” tool to see if it was used before and how it looked like. That is how I found out why I couldn't get it into Google at all in the first place.

Short and sweet Domain names

You could also do some brainstorming sessions to get spunky names or if you are trying to build a brand on the Internet use that brand name.
Like Alledia or Hummerbie as a simple example.

Just make sure the names are short and use a good keyword rich title for your website since you now want people to use a link to you with the keyword you target.
Mostly they will use the title of your site to create a link. So for this Blog, you could link to Joomla SEO Blog but you also could use that same link title to link to Joomla SEO Blog ;-)

Use your imagination and you will see how creative you really can be once you start throwing your ideas on a white-board or a piece of paper (electric ones work fine too).

Domain Extensions

A short paragraph on domain extensions or tld's, you know, the endings of a domain name?

There are a lot of them and it looks like there are going to be even more if all plans as expected.
The best ones for an international market are .com .net .org which are simply the bests tld's.
But they could be taken and you need to venture out to other tld's or choose another name.

.info is not that good since some people think if you use that it is a spam site (I wonder why..)
You could also look at some foreign ones like .tv (expensive) or .it but those are just gadget like domains.
.mobi does work very well if you target mobile users.

What works best in extensions is to choose a tld that is locale to the market you want to target.
I use a .nl tld for my dutch web websites and that works great.

In conclusion: look at your competitors and what they use, look at your keywords list and be creative in finding that domain name that works for you!

P.s. If you have some great ideas on how to ease this process, don't hesitate to throw them into the comments.

Manage your websites in one place in Domain Log Book

Filed Under: Free Online Services, Seo Basics

In January of 2007 I wrote on my Blog a post about "Keepings Tabs on Your domain and Others"

The site I wrote about is www.domainlogbook.com and is Free for you to use, just register and start adding your websites, or those of your clients… and main competitors maybe… oh, that's'an Evil thought…

The Free online service to manage your domains

The Domain Log Book Information

But what do you get if you use this service, that is the important part!

Domainlogbook keeps track of your websites and give you the following information after you added your domain:

  • Expiration date of your domain
  • Google Rank
  • Alexa Rank
  • Compete rank

Besides that you can also see the latest update date, and if you want to get the Whois data with one click.

You can sort the different tables to quickly see which sites have the highest page rank, or the best Alexa score.

Overview of some of the features of Domain Log Book

And if you want to sort the domain differently, or filter the results, put some tags on the domains, like customer site, or Blogs… you get the picture once you start using it.

It is really a great free online tool to Manage your Domains for Free..
So get going and register for free at www.domainlogbook.com