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Client has keyword loaded URL's everywhere

by amagneto
3 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi guys,

I've just started working with a new client offering professional business services. They employed a guy to work on their SEO before and he has honestly just abused the site. There's a fair few pages that have useful content, but their url's are stuffed with industry keywords that are not directly related to the content on the page and the same goes for the title tags. Most of these pages have no backlinks.

For e.g.

/industry-keyword-1-industry-keyword-2-industry-keyword-3-brand-name

I'm really not sure what to do here. I'd be inclined to just tear the website apart and work on a completely new site architecture but I don't want to do anything overly drastic and lose the few good rankings that they have.

Any advice would be great.
#client #keyword #loaded #seo #url
  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Originally Posted by amagneto View Post

    Hi guys,

    I've just started working with a new client offering professional business services. They employed a guy to work on their SEO before and he has honestly just abused the site. There's a fair few pages that have useful content, but their url's are stuffed with industry keywords that are not directly related to the content on the page and the same goes for the title tags. Most of these pages have no backlinks.

    For e.g.

    /industry-keyword-1-industry-keyword-2-industry-keyword-3-brand-name

    I'm really not sure what to do here. I'd be inclined to just tear the website apart and work on a completely new site architecture but I don't want to do anything overly drastic and lose the few good rankings that they have.

    Any advice would be great.
    I always say don't mess with ranked pages but sometimes you have to do whatever it takes to protect a site from risking a Google slap or manual review. As always there's no guarantees Google will rank a 301 redirect, changing a URL is extremely drastic.

    Anyways, in this order...
    1. Pick one or two of the lower traffic volume pages that's currently ranked & 301 redirect the spammy URL to a better optimized URL.
    2. Run Screaming Frog after the 301 redirect/s & double check there's no broken internal links (404s, etc...).
    3. Double check the xml sitemap doesn't have any instances of the old URL/s.
    4. Run the old URLs through Google Webmaster Tools indexing tool. That should instantly show Google a 301 redirect exist & let them know to update their database.
    5. Check the SERPs for your new URLs with a site:domain.com/exact-internal-url-here while running incognito (clear browser history/cache first).
    6. Wait a few days & check the new URL is still ranked per each keyword. Keep an eye on the ranked page, make sure everything is running smooth.

    If everything is running smooth on the new URLs, run another batch of a couple of URLs, same process as above.

    Basically start with the lowest traffic volume pages that are ranked & slowly work backwards towards the best traffic page that's ranked.

    This way you can slowly test Googles response to the 301s without risking the farm.
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  • Profile picture of the author amagneto
    Great advice Yukon and that makes complete sense. I'll make the changes gradually as you suggest and then see how it goes.
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    • Profile picture of the author Jammy123
      Banned
      Thanks Yukun,
      Always I noticed you provide proper solution for everything.
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