Building world-class Search Engine Optimization expertise

As far as a “bittersweet” SEO case study is concerned, we have a pretty good one to share from The Karcher Group (TKG) in Canton, Ohio. In late April 2008, the TKG SEO team began the transition of TheKarcherGroup.com to TKG.com and have exhaustively documented the trials and tribulations on our SEO blog.

As far as the sweet part of our tale is concerned, everyone was pretty excited (you should have seen our President, Geoff Karcher, bouncing through the office) when we finalized the acquisition of TKG.com. Besides not having to spell out T H E K A R C H E R… when telling people about our web site, we also knew that long-term having a three letter domain would benefit us greatly.

The bitter continuation was that before we even started we realized the mission would be challenging. So despite mild protesting and “on the record” concern, the TKG SEO Team, led by Marketing Manager Jennifer Geh, “volunteered” to handle the web marketing transition of TheKarcherGroup.com to TKG.com.

Despite experiencing a wide continuum of issues, ranging from being blacklisted, to indexing issues, to benchmark comparisons, our little narrative has apparently become a perfect study of domain transfer issues, in addition to a great learning experience. We’ve even had some great changing domain name insight from professionals in the field like Anita Campbell which has proved extremely helpful. Ultimately, just like most things in the SEO world, you learn a little everyday.

A new blog to promote its online marketing expertise has been launched by IdeaStar Inc., a Cleveland area full-service Web development company.

The blog, spinfield.com, has two purposes. One is to educate and entertain clients, potential clients and others in the marketplace. The other purpose is to demonstrate how a good blog is run.

“We have compelling content and interesting perspectives on the latest trends in online marketing,” Jim Fisher, IdeaStar president, said. “It’s a good opportunity to engage in a conversation with the marketplace.”

Plenty of hardcore programming involving RSS feeds and interconnectivity to the global blogosphere are included in the site. “The views we present on the Spinfield blog will immediately become part of the global conversation on those subjects,” Jim said. Content is provided by 14 members of IdeaStar. The goal is to post at least two articles, podcasts, or vidcasts per day.

So take a look. Leave comments. Subscribe to the blog. We hope you’ll find something interesting.