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How To SEO An Old Site?

by J.M.Wilson
8 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi guys,

I've recently bought a business, offline, and with it comes a fantastic website with loads of articles and information related to the customers desires.

However, in terms of SEO, it's non existent.

Basically, I want to go in to the Wordpress back end and install Yoast and make sure each page and post on the website is perfectly opimized. I know it may not make a huge difference but I'm anal about it!

Anyway, is there anything I should watch out for? Is this wise?

What about changing URL names etc?

Any advice greatly appreciated - I'm used to SEO'ing brand new websites so I don't want to mess anything up!
#seo #site
  • Profile picture of the author J.M.Wilson
    Bumpity bump!
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  • Profile picture of the author JohnConorX
    Always apply the fundamentals of SEO and you will never go wrong my friend!
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    Digital Marketing Enthusiast from Malaysia
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    • Profile picture of the author aidacopy
      Hey JMW, what do you mean by SEO is non-existent? If the website is old and has numerous articles it should have ranked for at least some of the keywords.

      I'm unfamiliar with Yoast, but I see two choices here.

      One, go back and redo everything in great detail. This may take a lot of time, and may backfire in a sense that google may see completely updated articles as brand new pages, so they may lose whatever ranking they have.

      Two, clean up old articles a little bit as you go, and make sure that the new articles you add to the site are SEO optimized to the best of your ability. So if you go back to clean the articles just a little bit, you can do simple stuff like throw in some photos and make sure that the names of the photo files are rich in keywords...

      Hope that helps.
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      • Profile picture of the author J.M.Wilson
        Originally Posted by aidacopy View Post

        Hey JMW, what do you mean by SEO is non-existent? If the website is old and has numerous articles it should have ranked for at least some of the keywords.

        I'm unfamiliar with Yoast, but I see two choices here.

        One, go back and redo everything in great detail. This may take a lot of time, and may backfire in a sense that google may see completely updated articles as brand new pages, so they may lose whatever ranking they have.

        Two, clean up old articles a little bit as you go, and make sure that the new articles you add to the site are SEO optimized to the best of your ability. So if you go back to clean the articles just a little bit, you can do simple stuff like throw in some photos and make sure that the names of the photo files are rich in keywords...

        Hope that helps.
        By non existant, I mean there has been none done whatsoever. No focus keywords, no page titles or headings, no page descriptions, images with no titles and alt tags... nothing at all.

        I'm wondering if I go back through each page (which I'm willing to do!) and get the on page SEO up to scratch would it have a detrimental effect? Am I better off just leaving as is and then SEO'ing new articles?
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        • Profile picture of the author aidacopy
          None whatsoever? In that case do a little bit of both.

          Why don't you revamp 10 old pages and see how that affects the site, and spend the rest of the time adding new stuff that you're SEOing?

          Good luck!
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  • Profile picture of the author PerformanceMan
    Originally Posted by J.M.Wilson View Post

    Hi guys,

    I've recently bought a business, offline, and with it comes a fantastic website with loads of articles and information related to the customers desires.

    However, in terms of SEO, it's non existent.

    Basically, I want to go in to the Wordpress back end and install Yoast and make sure each page and post on the website is perfectly opimized. I know it may not make a huge difference but I'm anal about it!

    Anyway, is there anything I should watch out for? Is this wise?

    What about changing URL names etc?

    Any advice greatly appreciated - I'm used to SEO'ing brand new websites so I don't want to mess anything up!
    Yoast will 301 the old URLs automatically so you have nothing to worry about. There might be a month or so when the two URLS exist that could bring issues, but nothing major. I recently did this exact think and the results have been good.
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    Free Special Report on Mindset - Level Up with Positive Thinking
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  • Profile picture of the author John Romaine
    SEO'ing an old site is no different SEO'ing a new site.

    Which website is it?
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    BS free SEO services, training and advice - SEO Point

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  • Profile picture of the author curationsoft
    One of the reasons why deep links must be implemented. You're saying that you have an old website and has a lot of articles on it. If it has deep links then this method will be a great way to get your whole old site back on track. Its asking google to recrawl your website.

    You can read here on how: Ask Google to crawl a page or site - Webmaster Tools Help

    There's a way there where google bots will crawl the URL you specified and all the links associated. Google confirms that they will re-crawl your site within 24 hours after using the feature.

    Then even if your site already has a lot of articles, still be consistent when it comes to your articles. create several daily. I say several in a day because it is very easy for me, I'm only curating contents so I'm able to create in just 15-20 mins. When you're consistent of course bots will most likely visit your site often because they know your posting consistently. Not only bots but your readers as well.
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