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    Client Worried About SEO Decline After Site Redesign

    On-Page / Site Optimization
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    • ATP
      ATP last edited by

      I hate these situations, its one of those 'for the long-term' cases.

      Sure they rank well now, but eventually Google might/will penalise them. At the same time, you are not being employed for SEO and the client must make the final decision with all the facts. If you are being employed for SEO I would stand your ground a lot more. But as you are not you can simply offer your professional opinion and leave it to them.

      Sure, if you cut out the SPAM they might loose rankings, but if you dont cut SPAM they might get penalised.

      Your way, they become future proof, the risk is safe, monitored and means no penalty just rankings that can still be improved over a relatively short period.

      Their way, the risk is dangerous, their rankings could be destroyed for a long time and it could happen at any time.

      I would simply explain that good SEO is also 'preventative' not just 'responsive'. Get it in writing, and cover your own ass and let him make the decision.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
      • ThomasHarvey
        ThomasHarvey @EGOL last edited by

        "If someone was going to do a redesign for me, they should be able to tell me how their new design was going to be a huge kick up for my SEO, visitor engagement, sales, and more.    Design changes should be done well enough that the website owner gets multiple bangs for the buck."

        I completely disagree, I know some people who can design a phenomenal website, yet they don't know a thing about SEO. That's not their job, their job is to offer a highly converting and inviting website NOT help it rank. If I went to a designer who does everything then I should be very wary of their work as after all a jack of all trades is a master of none.

        BradsDeals 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • TheZenAgency
          TheZenAgency last edited by

          In regards to the content i would try to worry more about writing naturally and for the user rather than "keyword density" generally most people stopped measuring this years ago.

          PeaSoupDigital 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • PeaSoupDigital
            PeaSoupDigital @TheZenAgency last edited by

            Oh, I know, I was just highlighting the spammy nature of their use of 'Florida villas'.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • BlueprintMarketing
              BlueprintMarketing last edited by

              people that get hung up on keywords are a pain but you should be forthright and tell them yes they will most likely see a drop in traffic for a minimum of 3 to 4 months.

              Use this reference

              https://www.candidsky.com/blog/the-seo-2015-guide-to-website-migration/

              sincerely,

              Tom

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • Guest
                Guest last edited by

                This post is deleted!
                PeaSoupDigital 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • PeaSoupDigital
                  PeaSoupDigital @Guest last edited by

                  Hi Josh,

                  Our redesign, on paper, will make the site much, much better. However, like I say, my main concern is that we'll reduce the amount of keywords the client has shoved on the homepage years ago. It seems, however, that this old school tactic of keyword-stuffing has worked and Google is letting him get away with it.

                  Guest BradsDeals 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • Guest
                    Guest @PeaSoupDigital last edited by

                    This post is deleted!
                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                    • BradsDeals
                      BradsDeals @ThomasHarvey last edited by

                      Is that site really so phenomenal if no one sees it because SEO best practices weren't baked into the design?

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                      • BradsDeals
                        BradsDeals @PeaSoupDigital last edited by

                        Are you sure the keyword stuffing is why they rank, or are they ranking in spite of it?

                        There may not be an easy way to know without taking a deep breath and jumping in, just make sure you have the ability to roll everything back in the event it goes sideways.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                        • BlueprintMarketing
                          BlueprintMarketing last edited by

                          Do not worry about your keyword ratio just worry about creating high-quality content with somebody that has much better grammar and writing abilities and I. (I use Grammarly or dictate to a coworker when posting on  a client's site.)

                          https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/best-practice/test-development-changes/

                          https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/tag/website-architecture/

                          here are no fewer than five ways to test changes before they even go live and have any impact on performance:

                          1. Test site vs Live site: crawl a staging site and compare it to the live one
                          2. Test robots.txt changes
                          3. Test a new XML Sitemap
                          4. Crawl the site with modified URLs
                          5. Test the impact of removing parameters

                          now if you are rebuilding use HTTPS it is not a powerful ranking symbol now however it is very smart to pull off to Band-Aids at once

                          • https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/best-practice/the-zen-guide-to-https-configuration/
                          • https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/news/https-when-to-act/

                          if you add HTTPS via HTTP/2 or cloudflare do not set HSTS for more than a couple days when setting up the site.

                          https://moz.com/blog/http2-a-fast-secure-bedrock-for-the-future-of-seo

                          USE https://blog.cloudflare.com/enforce-web-policy-with-hypertext-strict-transport-security-hsts/

                          HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS), which could also help with speed issues on HTTPS.

                          See

                          • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqRUuwUupvM&feature=youtu.be
                          • https://youtu.be/uJkbhAErRl4

                          please do not take offense to the chicken it is how I feel about myself.

                          Sincerely,

                          Thomas

                          7aICGOs.gif 6x9xkAN.jpg 6QNGCC1.gif

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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