How can Tech IT Easy recover its glorious past Web rankings ?
A few weeks ago, Tech IT Easy has switched from its previous URL (http://www.jeremyfain.net or http://jeremyfain.wordpress.com) to the current one (http://www.techiteasy.org), thus acknowledging the fact that the very nature of this blog has dramatically shifted – previously a personal blog with occasional outside contributions, now a truly collective blog, capitalizing on our original “out-of-the-box” approach and our diverse and complementary blogger profiles. This, besides, was perfectly in line with Jeremy’s expectations, back in January 2007, when I was first approached to participate to Tech IT Easy.
So far so good. But in the process, we partly lost something we were dearly attached to: our Web rankings. Our traffic is still largely satisfying for our egos (having slightly decreased though), our reader base keeps expanding steadily, and posts tend to be more and more commented. However I personnally still find unsatisfactory our visibility through search engines, at least in comparison of what it was before the migration. More precisely, the numerous trackbacks (featured on a variety of blogs, the ones of regular readers – O. Ezratty, Joseph Cargo, etc… – as well as more exotic ones) helped us reach a significant ranking: now, these trackbacks are inoperant. The blogposts which were all highly visible have now been discarded by Google, which should not come as a surprise since their URLs are now obsolete. Nonetheless, a majority of them have not yet “recovered” and been restored through their new address. So I will ask two simple questions :
1) How on Earth are we meant to operate (through Wordpress or whatever) in order to restore the visibility of all the previous posts in search engines, now that they have a different URL ? Is there any way to do so, except waiting for Mr. Google, Yahoo and Live Search – OK, just kidding, this was just to please Jeremy 
– to crawl the integrality of the blog once again ?
2) Would new, up-to-date trackbacks help us to get to this point faster ? If so, shall we ask our fellow bloggers to update their trackbacks – and if we do so, will they fulfill our demands ? Or should we just strive to provide ever more better posts, in order to obtain further recognition, something we should do anyway ?
Thank you for your insights. SEO specialists are a rare species, since it implies evolving as fast as Google, which is non trivial.
Steve, also a proud member of the Middle East geopolitics-focused think-tank AFIDORA, is a co-author on Tech IT Easy. You can find out more about him on this blog’s initial announcement.
Related posts:
Blogroll, Business strategy, CRM, Internet, Project Management, blogging, media, user-generated content
Hum, guys, you should never ever have lost any of the traffic from search engines…
You should do Apache Redirect (Permanent : 301) , either in .htaccess files or in PHP.
If this is done well, cleanly and quickly, you might have a chance to recover…
You should buy a popular website and redirect it to Techiteasy. I ve heard trhat espn.com was worth a few bucks…
Hi Jérémy,
I suggest you change the URLs of your posts and categories… If your trackbacks do not work, use this opportunity to optimize your URLs. At least delete the date, or replace it with the main category of the article: example:
http://www.blog-conversion.com/service-client/netflix-sur-quels-canaux-devez-vous-proposer-votre-service-client/
It boosted traffic from search engines from 30% to 55%… And i still think I should have more.
Personally, I’m reminded of two inspiring quotes:
“We’ve never tried to become number one in terms of volumes or revenues; as long as we keep improving our quality, size will automatically follow.” Katsuaki Watanabe on the Toyata-way.
and:
“If you build it, they will come.” ‘The Field of Dreams’.
@ Raphaël : Fine. As soon as we get $1 million, we’ll buy a blog dedicated to medical tourism. It will surely be a wise move.
@Julien : Fine. Unfortunately, I am not sure how to reach .htaccess through Wordpress…thanks for the tip whatsoever.
@Tom> wasn’t Jeremy but Steve
As we’re hosted by Wordpress, there’s very little tricks we can do server-side to “trick up” our search rankings. I agree with Vincent, our search ranking is just an indicator of what how interesting our stuff is. The correct way is to write interesting stuff. The site is, after all, for readers, not search engines.
Precisely : I totally agree with you for the focus on rythm, consistency and quality. I’d love this blog keeping up the good job.
Actually, I am not really looking for tricks, but I’m rather surprised by the fact that new posts are not registered as such by Google anymore, whereas this was the case before.
I suppose there’s a link with the facts that trackbacks are now obsolete. It is not a big deal, but apparently we haven’t considered all issues before the migration to techiteasy.org. Since I was one of the most vocal supporters of such a move, I feel somehow responsible
Guys : if you keep doing a good job, visibility & awareness will come again soon. You already got the recognotion…
_Marc
Thx Marc for these kind words…