One of the most successful websites in recent years has been the Ice Driver website for Andy McKenna. I’ve been involved in Ice Driver all the way from it’s concept right through to it becoming the premier winter driving experience. At the end of 2009, we managed to capture the dot-com Ice Driver domain that had not previously been available. But it was right at the top of the enquiry season for Ice Driver and the SEO work was paying off, so did we really want to move house right then?
It was tempting to fire it up, but we decided to shelve it until the summer. Now, summer’s here and we’re about to start the dot-com move and I thought readers would be interested to see the steps we’re taking to make it happen, hopefully without being penalised too much along the way. I’ll also be describing some of the new stuff we’re putting on the site, as we’re doing much more than just copying over last year’s model to the new domain.
The first thing I did was install the domain and add some content. Brand new domain names are often subject to Google’s ’sandbox’. This means that Google take a look and let the site sit for a while (no-one knows how long) before they decide you’re a ‘good guy’ and start to show you in search results. So we added content and sat back a while to see. Not too long and it’s now starting to appear, so time for the next step – finalise the design look, write the new 2010 content and start with the SEO stuff.
Next time, I’ll write about what we decided to do with the layout, how we’ll be using social media this season and what visitors think of the new site.
Ice Driver – Moving to a Dot Com
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