When I left Microsoft a couple of years back I also decided to move house on the internet. I started looselytyped.net and made it my new location on the tubez (aka the internet).  I didn’t technical “move” house I guess as you can still find my old blog.

In fact that is the problem!

If you search for “Chris Johnson SharePoint” my new site is on the first page of Bing, but not at the top & it’s the 2nd result on Google.  However, my old blog is in the #1 spot in both search engines. Grrrr.

I didn’t want to delete my old blog, that seems like overkill and old posts still get a lot of traffic. There are 3 or 4 old posts that are knocking past 150,000 views which must mean someone finds them helpful. But given I have moved house I want people to find me at my new location. This issue has been confirmed by a couple of others who tried to find me and didn’t have good success.  Classic SEO problem some would say.

Unfortunately, I cant seem to “relocate” my old content to my new blog & put in a good redirection process that would be search engine friendly. My old blog is hosted with Microsoft and there are limited controls as far as I can tell.  So I think leaving it in place is my only option.

I have been making a concerted effort to try and get my new location indexed and ranking higher so people can find me. It has been working slowly.

One tool I heard about in the Startups for the Rest of us podcast was HitTail. (www.HitTail.com).  I also saw that Andrew Connell was giving it a try too, so thought I would give it a shot.

It’s a very nifty tool.  You sign up (free trial) and then add a wee bit of JavaScript to your page and you are all set. 

What does HitTail do?

In a nutshell HitTail shows you what keywords (from your existing organic search traffic) you should target when writing content for your site that will increase your ranking.

Now this seems a bit counter intuitive at first, at least it did to me. Why would I write more content about things people are already coming to my site for that they found from a search? 

Well, the suggestions it makes are based on the fact that people are finding your site but that you could be doing a much better job of ranking higher for those terms. So it helps guide you on what to write about that will bump you up the ranking.

So I am trying it out.  I am reviewing the suggestions it makes and matching that up with topics I a) want to write about, b) have something useful to say about, and c) that I know people will find interesting.

At this stage it’s a trial to see how useful I find the suggestions, but I thought it was a handy tool to help with my internet home relocation.

If any of my readers are SEO experts I would love any other suggestions you have around my predicament.  Suggestions welcome! Get in touch on Twitter @LoungeFlyZ

-CJ