How to SEO a Website Built off Godaddy?

[suskanchan]

I have a client whose website is built off Godaddy services. I know Godaddy is not the right choice for building a website, but what's done is done. The client has already bought the Godaddy services and there's no way I can tell him to go rebuild his website before we could optimize it for SEO.

I'm already facing a lot of challenges while optimizing on-page elements. When I wanted to verify the ownership for Google Analytics and Webmaster Tool via his Godaddy account. the process failed many times. it looks like Godaddy is using some kind of caching not allowing us to modify the codes. For example, I'd applied the site verification codes for Webmasters Tool 48 hours ago, and the metatag for google site verification is not yet updated in the frontend. It's quite frustrating.

What would you suggest?

[Marcus_Miller]

The obvious suggestion is to get the client to move his site to something a little more SEO friendly. I know this is not what you want to hear but if you are unable to make even relatively simple on page changes then you are really fighting an uphill battle from the go.

I can't imagine the site is huge and technical on the godaddy platform so recreating it or something very similar in WordPress would give him an affordable site with far better SEO prospects.

Ultimately, it's tough enough out there, why start the race with a wooden leg?

[suskanchan]

Thanks a lot Marcus for your insights. Yes, I might as well suggest him to rebuild his website using WordPress. However, his website has nearly 200 pages already, many of which are product pages. He's into furniture business. Moving his site to Wordpress does look like a monumental task at the moment. But I appreciate your feedback. Thanks!

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey Susan, you could possibly outsource the population the moving of the content to make it a more manageable or affordable task.

I have taken jobs on before with little physical access to the site and it was always a tough and pretty frustrating job so is not the way to go unless there is no other option.

Ask him where he wants to be in six months time - wrestling with goDaddy or with a solid six months of work behind him and a well optimised and hopefully performing site.

[suskanchan]

Marcus, I totally agree with you. It doesn't make sense wrestling with Godaddy because business is forever. I just talked to a developer who said the website could be redone on Wordpress in a month's time. There are nearly 1300 products on his website at the moment. However, he also said he is not sure if WordPress is the best option to redevelop the website. A lot of factors will go into making the decision before I could suggest the most ideal platform to redevelop the website. Personally, I'd suggest Wordpress but for an e-commerce website, there could be factors I'm aware of. What are your thoughts?

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey, WordPress was just a shot in the dark, I did not know it was an ecommerce site.

Still, there are various strong wordpress ecommerce plugins out there and a wordpress install + the woocommerce plugin OR wp ecommerce + yoast SEO plugin would give you a pretty good starting point under wordpress.

Ultimately, each CMS platform has it's own strengths and weaknesses and likewise each customer will have a preference for a certain system depending on their own technical skills.

I like to try to keep things wordpress as I find most non tech people get on with that better than say Joomla or Drupal which is where I used to hang my hat a little more.

You could always mock up a rough and ready prototype with these systems in a few hours and spend a day with your client to make sure it was going to meet his requirements fully.

If you were not involved in the original development if you could see what the requirements analysis was or any kind of brief or plan you could better make a call on this but... for most people, the above should do the job without too much effort.

Hope this helps!
Marcus

[RobertFisher]

Hello Sushant,

I feel your pain, but I think you are worrying too much about site size, etc. First, if you can actually accomplish anything with GoDaddy, please do a white paper. GoDaddy is a SALES organization: "Thank you for calling sales and support, my name is Matt. May I please have your four digit pin number?" Yes, it is a direct quote.

If you do not light a fire under your client, you will regret it long term (a month or two from now). Remember that with an eCommerce site and an entrepreneur it will only grow. I am going to guess that you likely are not a developer of sites and that may be the cause of some of your fear of moving due to the size of the task. Actually, when I look at a 200 page eCommerce site (assuming most are product pages) I do not see anything daunting at all. Many on moz are handling 10,000 pages plus.

Marcus makes a great suggestion in steering you toward WP and I would also say, with a little study, you could likely have a competency in Joomla. Utilizing osCommerce, you can use a WP platform and life is fairly simple. You would just need a web developer (no offense to anyone, but not a designer) with a reasonable track record and someone (you) to supervise and supply SEO direction. Remember, you are not recreating the wheel and by all means keep it simple. Do not go for a full redesign, etc. Keep it essentially the same, move the data. Just get it done.

With a platform and correct architecture, you are just moving data once all is set up.

Yes to all, it is an over simplification, but you cannot let fear stop you from pushing a client. I would rather push the client and lose them than be a party to their downfall. Remember, when they fail it will be on you. I would rather fail making a move than fail standing still.

So, the final push is this: You have this forum for help as a first base; if you push your client and make the move, get a dev with at least a year of experience to assist you with the basics, you can PM me and I will allow one of our developers to answer your questions via phone/Skype/email to assist you with any roadblocks or questions you run into. We will not carry you, but we can certainly move some hurdles. We will provide the instruction but not do the work for you.

So, no excuses, call the client and tell him what he has to do.

Hope this helps,

Robert

[RobertFisher]

Sushant,

As I was writing my response I saw this. There is no problem with a 1300 or 3000 product WP eCommerce site, etc. Since you are selling furniture, there is not going to be a huge parts inventory, etc. and my guess is that your product pages will initially come from the manufacturer (please change asap after move). 
If the developer really doesn't want to use WP you can use Joomla. The problem with a Drupal build is you have to have a good Drupal dev and they have to know process to do this efficiently. You do not want to be designing and building at the same time. Please do not do that. You will be 6 months and still no site.

hope this helps,

[suskanchan]

Hello Robert, Thanks a lot for your incredible suggestions! I'm definitely going to keep them in mind while pushing my client for the redevelopment. Cheers!

[suskanchan]

Yes, Marcus, your suggestions are very helpful. Thank you very much!