To Point or Not to Point

This is a business, right? I'm sorry Mr. Jones but this is beyond my control that's how it works in the internet world. Lori do you have a magic wand, do you live in Kansas? You don't do miracles to you?

You can't give clients everything they want, you can't give things you have no control over. Tell it like it is, those are the facts Mr. You've done a great job, be happy. I think this client is asking more than he paid for, and is possibly immature.

Be confident, be more assertive, be polite...you will never satisfy this person. I guarentee it!

Lori,

Several years ago I did a redesign for a business. His old site was birth-of-the-Internet old, so I was mostly just bringing it up to date.

He wanted a picture of his office in the header. No problem. He wanted it bigger. I increased it by about 10%. It looked too big to me, but no problem.

He wanted it even bigger.

I met with the guy. I asked him to indicate on his computer screen exactly how big he wanted the picture of his office (and the header). It was all but one inch of the screen. He wanted nearly the entire real estate above the fold to be the picture of his office. (I should also add that his business wasn't one where customers came to his office, or even one where an office could lend credibility or authority. The picture had NO BEARING on anything other than his pride. However, pride can be a powerful thing.)

I told him that he hired me as his designer, that I knew the web and I knew design. I then told him that if he wanted me to make such an unusual design change, I'd need something in writing saying that it was his decision.

He put it in writing. I made the site.

Six months later I heard from a friend who knew him that he'd hired another web designer to "fix" his site.

Things like this (and a turquoise and orange site that another client HAD TO HAVE) are why I either do template sites, where clients choose one they like, or I outsource the design.

Hey SEO guys.

If I point an old site to a new site, will the old site lose it's position on Google?

If I load the new site on the old domain and outsourced the SEO, realistically, how long would it take for the site to get back to page 1?

The niche is not that competitive.

SEO experts, if you need more information to help me, please let me know.

Thank you.

Forwarded domains don't do well in the SERP's : There is no actual content to index, therefore no real content to 'rank' the page/site for, and therefore, no reason to include the site in the index. It will eventually get de-indexed.
As far as uploading new content over old and it's effects on ranking: Doing a complete site re-vamp will have a short-term effect on SEO and where your client shows in the results; however as long as your on page elements are strong and the keyword 'focus' is approximately the same, there shouldn't be any long-term effects. Normal stuff like keyword density, bolding of keywords, h1/h2 headers/etc should remain approximately equal.
I don't feel that anybody can give you a reliable measure in this case, as we cannot analyze content that we cannot see.
One thing you will want to do is make sure that if you are uploading an entire new site, that all old pages redirect to their equivalent page on the new site, and/or setup a general 404-redirect in your htaccess file.
General redirect info: 301 Redirect - How to create Redirects

Redirect on pages (not quite the same as forwarding entire domain) is important to maintain page rank and link juice that individual pages would have developed for your client over the year.

Your logo issue reminds me of something that belongs on clientsfromhell.com lol! Why do some people insist on being so stubborn and pug headed?

Thank you very much dv8! That is really good information. I appreciate you taking the time to respond.

Hi Tad. I think that the client's ego tends to get in the way of business sense. They don't realize the importance of having an effective website either. At least in the beginning they don't.

I even thought of split testing (with me paying for it) to show this guy how much better his site would do without the 1/2 page logo. And then when it did, double the normal price for the site that works.

But I won't. I'll move on to the next venture and concentrate on what makes the money.

Thanks Warriors!