This visitor post is by Majestic’s Marketing Director, Dixon Jones, who explains the factors for their recent name modification.
Majestic, the link intelligence database that lots of SEOs have pertained to use every day, has dropped the “SEO” from it’s brand and from its domain, to end up being majestic.com. Given that the majority of people won’t have utilized Google’s site migration device before, here’s what it resembles as soon as you push the “go” button:
In real fact– there’s a minor bug in the device. The address change is to the https variation of majestic.com (which GWT makes us sign up as a different website) but that message improperly leaves out that. Thankfully, elsewhere in GWT its clear the omission is on Google’s side, not a typo from the SEO. It is more than likely that the migration tool was established prior to the requirement for Google to have separate confirmation codes for http and https variations of the site.
The covert expenses of a name change
There were a couple of “nay sayers” on Twitter upset that Majestic may be deserting its SEO roots by changing its name, however I think a lot of people get that it makes good sense. However, it was far from an irrelevant expense. Purchasing the domain itself took three years of negotiation, and the domain seems to have actually included lots of random subdomains indexed with long timeouts on the caches. Some point to wine affiliate links, others to take a trip affiliates. Nothing that will not arrange itself out in time, but you would be surprised at what domainers get up to with parked domains!
The genuine cost though is in the migration, for small sites 301s are easy. Majestic is a beast though. Tens of countless users at any one time … some logged in to free accounts, others not logged in, yet more on paid subscriptions– all these “states” create different responses from the website and call various servers and hardware. The outcome has been months of preparation and in recent weeks all of our developers have nearly solely being working on simply changing the domain without any fallout. This had the negative effects of us locking down the website so that there were NO practical upgrades for a duration prior to the changeover and there will likewise be lock down for a period after. The only exception has actually been an upgraded blog style. The brand change then, has actually momentarily slowed Majestic’s usual lightening advancement speed. The benefit should deserve the costs though.
The risk vs the benefit of a name modification
Many trademark name modifications fail in business world. The equity developed around a brand is often hard to measure and is underestimated when the decision to alter a brand occurs. Majestic likewise gained from Moz’s migration from SEOMoz. They looked at the modification in tandem with a big functionality launch and in hindsight this caused them a number of difficulties. By contrast, Majestic went the other way. The long term reward though, is considerable. At every conference where Majestic has had a booth, at least one individual has shown up and said “So exactly what do you do, SEO?”
That is a problem– because Majestic is eventually an analytics business … a technology … an information set. Now Majestic has the opportunity to open the very same information to social online marketers, business intelligence experts, Public Relations experts, and even web searchers. The change is absolutely nothing short of enabling Majestic to be an online search engine, albeit rather specific niche in its focus.
Marketing Pilgrim
Another SEO tool drops the word "SEO".
