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Client building new website-need seo advice

by todd40fla
9 replies
  • SEO
    • |
i have a long time client who i have dominating his market for his main keywords.


he owns a mattress store in portland, oregon called mattress lot.


after 6 years in biz he wants to exand his company and is having a web design company create a new website for him to replace the one he and his wife created themselves on their imac.


so my question for you guys is./......will the new site screw up all of the hard work i have done to get him multiple page 1 rankings for almost all important keywords in his market?


his designer is going to contact me concerning things he can do in terms of site development to ensure we don't see any slippage.


any advice as to what i may recommend?


thanks in advance!
#advice #building #client #seo #websiteneed
  • Profile picture of the author DrForum
    Originally Posted by todd40fla View Post

    i have a long time client who i have dominating his market for his main keywords.


    he owns a mattress store in portland, oregon called mattress lot.


    after 6 years in biz he wants to exand his company and is having a web design company create a new website for him to replace the one he and his wife created themselves on their imac.


    so my question for you guys is./......will the new site screw up all of the hard work i have done to get him multiple page 1 rankings for almost all important keywords in his market?


    his designer is going to contact me concerning things he can do in terms of site development to ensure we don't see any slippage.


    any advice as to what i may recommend?


    thanks in advance!
    Hi,
    You do not need to worry. In fact you are a further step towards making sure that his online presence is highly valued. What I can tell you is that during the development of the website, be sure to incorporate the keywords you have been using in the webpages. They will help uplift the website to the top ranks of google ranking system. I can say that you are the best person who can help him have his website optimized with much easy. This is because you have enough skills as far as key words is concerned. You are best person, just read a few books here ad there and you will find your way out.
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  • Profile picture of the author DrForum
    Originally Posted by todd40fla View Post

    i have a long time client who i have dominating his market for his main keywords.


    he owns a mattress store in portland, oregon called mattress lot.


    after 6 years in biz he wants to exand his company and is having a web design company create a new website for him to replace the one he and his wife created themselves on their imac.


    so my question for you guys is./......will the new site screw up all of the hard work i have done to get him multiple page 1 rankings for almost all important keywords in his market?


    his designer is going to contact me concerning things he can do in terms of site development to ensure we don't see any slippage.


    any advice as to what i may recommend?


    thanks in advance!
    Hi,
    You do not need to worry. In fact you are a further step towards making sure that his online presence is highly valued. What I can tell you is that during the development of the website, be sure to incorporate the keywords you have been using in the webpages. They will help uplift the website to the top ranks of google ranking system. I can say that you are the best person who can help him have his website optimized with much easy. This is because you have enough skills as far as key words is concerned. You are best person, just read a few books here ad there and you will find your way out.
    Signature
    The Elite Ad-Network | Adsnik
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  • Profile picture of the author irawr
    Banned
    Originally Posted by todd40fla View Post

    so my question for you guys is./......will the new site screw up all of the hard work i have done to get him multiple page 1 rankings for almost all important keywords in his market?
    If you do this correctly, no.

    If you change any URLs then yes.

    If all you are doing is updating the appearance of the site and improving any content, then this will only help. The structure of the site should not change by even 1 character. I'm not talking about moving design elements around, I mean, if you change the url of the about page from site.com/about to site.com/about.html then you are fired.
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    • Profile picture of the author todd40fla
      Originally Posted by irawr View Post

      If you do this correctly, no.

      If you change any URLs then yes.

      If all you are doing is updating the appearance of the site and improving any content, then this will only help. The structure of the site should not change by even 1 character. I'm not talking about moving design elements around, I mean, if you change the url of the about page from site.com/about to site.com/about.html then you are fired.


      this is what i was thinking. so i should instruct the designers to keep the url's and transfer their new design and use the existing url's wherever possible? this is along the lines of what i was thinking would be a major key.


      the site will be getting a new look and they will be using a different platform from the original.
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      • Profile picture of the author irawr
        Banned
        Originally Posted by todd40fla View Post

        this is what i was thinking. so i should instruct the designers to keep the url's and transfer their new design and use the existing url's wherever possible? this is along the lines of what i was thinking would be a major key.


        the site will be getting a new look and they will be using a different platform from the original.
        If it's an "old page" it should reuse the original URL, if it's new then it doesn't matter. If there's an issue here, like for whatever reason you simply can not reuse the old URL, make sure you have a 301 redirect setup, redirecting from the old URL to the new one.

        You have to understand, google is not as smart as some people make it out to be. Google "learns" from your site structure, if you update a page it knows the location of, it doesn't have any issue, but when you change the structure it has to "relearn" how the structure works. It has no issues "learning" about new content and it's location, or "learning" that a webpage was updated.

        Edit: Seriously to the AI conspiracy theorists, it doesn't actually learn, it's a database, and there's some software that walks the data, get over it.
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        • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
          Either keep the old URLs, or redirect them. Also see that the good pages keep their titles, and most of their content.

          One additional point: make sure that the new internal link structure is not too convoluted. If the current site is working I'd try to make sure that the new front page has about the same links as before, and not all sorts of ludicrous widgets and social media buttons just because that's what digital agencies need to get off. The same goes for main navigation.

          Originally Posted by irawr View Post

          Edit: Seriously to the AI conspiracy theorists, it doesn't actually learn, it's a database, and there's some software that walks the data, get over it.
          Are you arguing with yourself? I've heard nobody even propose that Google crawler is some sort of neural net processor or learning computer. I've not even heard anyone state that Google would "learn" a website structure. That's completely unnecessary for what they're doing. Yes, they do keep cached copies and save the link structure, but there's no learning involved.

          The crawler will crawl the links that are there, and their algorithms will then parse the site. It doesn't take much to notice that if a site has changed.
          Signature
          Links in signature will not help your SEO. Not on this site, and not on any other forum.
          Who told me this? An ex Google web spam engineer.

          What's your excuse?
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  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    There are two main things you want to focus on with a site redesign. First, that the URLs remain the same, and if a URL needs to be dropped it must be 301 redirected to a new corresponding URL, as already stated.

    The other thing you want to make sure does not change is the internal linking structure.

    Of course, you also want to make sure the web designer is not doing stupid stuff like:

    -Using Flash

    -Embedding any important content or links in javascript

    -Duplicating links. Like when they build a navigation menu and then have all the same links again in the footer. A lot of sites do the same stuff with contact and about pages. In fact, I'm not a fan of contact and about links showing up at the top of the page, like many designers do. That is a waste of good link power. It is common with social links too. They will be at the top and bottom of the page.

    Those are the most common SEO phuckups web designers make. Not to be a dick, but if you are an SEO, you should know all of this though, right?
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    • Profile picture of the author paulgl
      Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

      There are two main things you want to focus on with a site redesign. First, that the URLs remain the same, and if a URL needs to be dropped it must be 301 redirected to a new corresponding URL, as already stated.

      The other thing you want to make sure does not change is the internal linking structure.
      I won't say any more than this:

      Come on Mike! Would not the OP already know that?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

      And if not, well,...like I said, I'll stop there.

      Paul
      Signature

      If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    No offense to OP but I really don't think this will end well.

    If you're here asking how to transition an old site to a new site (design/structure) there's no way this will end well. Now throw in a web designer that doesn't know SEO. Again, no offense to web designers but they're notorious for butchering SEO. It's like asking a plumber to fly an airplane.

    Practice doing a site overhaul on your own ranked domain/pages before destroying a local business. I hope they're also doing offline advertising.

    BTW, you don't have to overhaul an entire site all at once & risk wiping out every ranked page/keyword.

    Take baby steps on the weakest competition keywords & transition those pages to a new web design. Next, be patient & wait for Google to reindex the new web design page/s (the weak competition keyword pages). If the shit hits the fan it's no big deal for weak competition, learn from your mistakes before messing with tougher competition keywords.
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