Launch of DIYSEO and why its good for SEO’s

After about a year in development we are now launching DIYSEO.com!  We are offering a seven day free trial so please take it for a spin.  It is important to point out that DIYSEO is NOT a replacement for professional SEO consultants and is NOT a one size fit all SEO software solution.  

A Market Need – affordable SEO for the SMB’s

Having spent years in the early 1990′s doing SEO consulting full time I know firsthand that there are many business owners that simply can’t or won’t spend the money to hire a professional SEO that could cost them $500 per month to many thousands per month.  These same websites generally have the most low hanging fruit from a SEO perspective because they have not had their website professionally optimized previously.  Having been in the SEO space for many years I received countless requests from friends and family looking for help on their small business website.  I found myself giving very similar steps and tips to these small business websites.  After getting together with Andy Hagans we decided the right tools were on the marketplace to develop a simple SEO technology designed specifically for the small business website owner needing SEO.  

Why Is DIYSEO Good For SEO’s?

The target market for DIYSEO are small businesses who do not have the budget or do not want to spend what most professional SEO’s charge.  Our price point is $49/month making it affordable for the small business owner.  We have just launched our affiliate program which pays out a full $50 for any client you refer and a full $250 for any client you send over that signs up for our $499 annual service.  We think this is a great way for you to make money on clients you previously had to turn away.

SEO is NOT One Size Fits All

If you are looking for a high end SEO, DIYSEO is not for you, try: USA based: Greg Boser, Michael Gray, Eric Enge, and John Andrews.  UK based: Shaun Anderson and Patrick Altoft.

If you want an expert forum to learn advanced tactics and advanced SEO tools, DIYSEO is not for you, try: Aaron Wall’s SEOBOOK or Rand Fishkin’s SEOMOZ

If you are an agency looking to manage SEO for your agency, DIYSEO is not for you, try: RavenTools

If you are looking for a written guide to SEO, try: Hobo SEO’s DIY SEO guide or Matt McGee’s SEO ebook ($25)

If you are a small business or have a business that reaches small businesses then give DIYSEO a try!  Also if you have any business development ideas please shoot me an email at pg at patrickgavin.com

Update: DIYSEO in the news: Shoemoney’s DIYSEO Review, Techcrunch’s DIYSEO coverage.

Guide to a (hopefully) successful 301 – Update: 301 FAIL

I just made a major change for me and 301′d PatrickGavin.com to Searchengineoptimization.net  The focus of this site moving forward will be more of a SEO resource than my personal blog so I wanted a name that says this loud and clear.  I wanted to kick off the new site (new design coming soon btw) with a quick guide on how to properly 301 a domain.  If you would have done anything differently please let me know in the comments!  In the end, the judge will be Google and how it handles this 301.

Goal is to 301 redirect www.abc.com to www.123.com

1. Register both www.abc.com and www.123.com with Google webmaster tools.  Note that you will have to insert a snippet of code or upload a file to both of your sites to verify you do own or control both websites.

2. Make sure www.123.com takes on the exact design, look and feel, etc of the original www.abc.com site.  This is important as Google doesn’t like too much change going on at once.  Keep the design the same during a 301 so you don’t throw too much change at Google at once.

3. Make sure you keep the url structure the same, ie www.patrickgavin.com/2009/04/19/april-sandbox-update/ should be moved to www.searchengineoptimization.net/2009/04/19/april-sandbox-update/

4. Follow Google’s steps technical guidelines on completing a 301 

5. Double check your redirects.  Use a 301 redirect checker to make sure your redirects are seo friendly (http://www.internetofficer.com/seo-tool/redirect-check/).  Also, test a handful of urls from your old domain to make sure they are getting redirected properly.  You can easily do this by googling your old domain name and clicking through your sites indexed pages.  Be very sure that every single page of your old domain is getting redirected to another active page at your new domain.  You definitely don’t want to be left with a bunch of 404 not founds.  Additionally, it is recommended that you chose to redirect everything to either the www or non-www version of your new domain.

6. Let Google Webmaster Tools know about the 301 by submitting a "Change of Address" request. 

7. After the 301, it is highly recommended you build some strong links and add some content to the blog to show the site is still active & growing.  If you want to go further, have some of your old incoming links update their link to point to the new site (this is not required, but it shows that the sites that linked to you before still want to link to you now indicating it’s the same site as before).  Remember Google logs redirects just like they log your backlink data so don’t rely on 301′s as your sole link strategy.

8. Wait patiently and have some faith!  Your original site can disappear for a period of time from Google’s index leaving you with NOTHING for a period of time.  This could be days or weeks.  What should happen is the new site you 301′d to should appear taking on similar rankings that you had for your original site give or take a few spots up or down.

Now we will wait and see what happens with my 301 and I will keep you updated.  The PatrickGavin.com domain is currently ranking #6 for the coveted "search engine optimization" query so this is a bit of a gamble and it will be fun to see if it pays off!

UPDATE! +3 days after the 301.  My PatrickGavin.com site has lost all Google keyword rankings!  I have lost all rankings including #1 for "patrick gavin" #6 for "search engine optimization", etc.  Here is the good news: this is what happens when you do a 301.  Fingers crossed but the SearchEngineOptimization.net domain should* reappear in the coming days/weeks…

Update #2 – I should have updated this a while ago but the 301 attempt did not take!  I waited about 30 days and the 301 went no where.  Basically lost rankings for both sites.  Because of this I removed the 301 and the good news is about a week later all my rankings returned to my PatrickGavin.com site.  I have done a number of 301′s with these same steps and it worked flawlessly so I don’t think the steps are flawed.  The good news is I removed the 301 and I am right back where I started so nothing lost there and I may* try the 301 again in the future and see if it sticks.  

Coming Soon: DIYSEO.com (Sign up now!)

I am excited to announce a new project I am working on with Andy Hagans and a group of brilliant technologists. Our seo software will be called DIYSEO. Our product is meant to solve a simple problem: Small businesses with limited budgets, time, and online know-how need basic SEO help. The SEO service sector has expanded by a huge amount in the past few years, and there are varied and mature offerings geared towards corporations, agencies, and small businesses with $5,000-$1M+ annual online marketing budgets. On the tool and training side, there are a number of great SEO solutions out there that target different segments of the market:

• Professional SEOs, super affiliates, savvy webmasters, and in-house SEM managers can utilize Aaron Wall’s SEO Book and SEOmoz’s PRO membership.
• Marketing agencies and SEO service providers who need metric driven results can turn to solutions like SoloSEO and Raven Internet Marketing Tools.

But what about the small business that can budget only $500 and 25 hours per year towards online marketing?

The product is a couple of months away from a public launch but please leave your email address so you can be the first to preview the product and get other fun announcements along the way.  You can also follow DIYSEO on Twitter.  I haven’t been this excited about an SEO product since launching Text-Link-Ads.com back in 2003 and we look forward to bringing a product that will drive true SEO value to small businesses real soon! Visit DIYSEO.com to sign up for special announcements and product beta releases, etc.