An Update on the Domain Name Change

A couple weeks ago, we changed our name and domain to Take Lessons. Since then, we've experienced a drop off in organic traffic of about 20-25%. We actually had planned for it to be 50%, so it's not as bas as we thought.

A couple things have helped, I believe. First, we had a Google Page Rank of 5 on our last site, and with 301 permanent redirects, the search engines seemed to have picked up on the site change.

Second, we contacted as many of our inbound linking sites as possible. Here is the email we sent them:

Hi Mark,

You currently link to us at: http://www.name-of-site.com/links.php. We are so very thankful for the link!

Our old URL is “Click For Lessons” (http://www.clickforlessons.com).

I wanted to let you know that we've changed our name and updated our site URL. Our new name is Take Lessons and our link is http://takelessons.com.

Could you update the link? Many thanks and good karma to you!

Sincerely,

Steven,

TakeLessons.com

This simple request worked for a lot of sites. They were thankful we took the time to help them keep their site up to date. For us, it immediately impacted the number of links pointing to our new domain.

While a domain name change is certainly a challenging experience, I think with proper planning, you can make it a little less painful.