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Posts Tagged ‘SEO’
Rebuilding Your Website? Know the Risks and Be Prepared – Part II
Okay, after my last post (http://is.gd/eFCuu) I realized that I was touching on a subject that cannot be satisfied by a condensed collection of strategies and information related to transitioning from an old website to a new website. Considering how important a new website is to most companies, I’ve decided to post a few follow-up notes on the requirements for a seamless transition from an old and possibly well performing website, to a new, more user-friendly design built for ease of use and improved conversions. All the while preserving the accumulated reputation which can be affected by pagerank, pigeonrank, backlinks, fingerpointing, searchtraffic, slander and pirates.
You’ve probably heard about a site launch traffic tragedy from a colleague or business acquaintance. You may have even experienced it firsthand! You spend several months and 10′s of thousands of dollars on an amazing new website chock full of the latest social media widgets, mobile technology features and a huge release party. With a feeling of victory you ‘Flip the Switch’ only to see the website traffic virtually all but disappear. Online sales leads quickly dry up and soon your boss is breathing down your neck asking about the ROI promises you made in the last budget meeting.
Now in all honesty, the TLD (top-level domain-www.domain.com) will likely retain its traffic unless the content and code layout has changed substantially. So websites which have no value past their homepage will have no worries for the short-term.
Build an Inventory of Value Pages
For this first step I will attempt to describe how to use various analytics programs and free tools to build an inventory of the website. This is to develop a list of pages which Google has deemed to be of good value and which also have attracted back links from various other websites from around the internet.
Which Pages are Receiving General Internet Traffic - First, develop a complete list of all pages which are currently receiving web traffic (both search engine and direct). For this the bare minimum is going to be Google Analytics. Your standard log-based web stats will also work here but as we move into more detailed search engine traffic based priority lists, they become fairly useless. And make sure that you have at least 2 complete calendar weeks of data in order to gauge a more accurate meaningful average. Go back as far as you can to be honest (no more than 12 months), this is to factor in seasonal shifts in site traffic depending on the market. Export your list in to an excel sheet and get ready for the next list.
Which Pages are Receiving Search Engine Traffic - If your internal linking is clean and crawlable, this list will be as close as you’ll get to the most valuable pages in your website, unless you don’t drive leads or interest from the Search Engines… give your head a shake if this is you 
. During my career the one tool which has given me the most concise list of Search Engine traffic data is Eightfold Logic, formerly known as Enquisite. Eightfold Logic will export a complete list of entirely search based trafficked pages. Google Analytics will also give you this simple data so export ‘Search Engine Referrals (landing pages) Only” and move on. Add this to the excel page and prep for the next layer.
Which Pages are Being Linked to Externally (Back Links) – Perhaps the most important metric at the moment is Back Links (so long as you have ‘linkable content’). These are reputable websites, preferably within your industry which have linked to you from their website or blog. These are infinitely valuable for SEO and authority development. Okay, how do you gather a list of backlinks? Easy. Set up a Google Webmaster Tools account and authenticate your site. Once you’re in Google the diagnostic gates will open up for you to export. Navigate to Your Site on the Web => Links to your Site and extract the entire list of pages that it shows you here. Don’t worry about the numbers of links, you will want to preserve this entire list.
For another tool for collecting backlinks check out Link Diagnosis. This is a great site and I use it often in conjunction with Eightfold Logic and Google Webmaster Tools for compiling my list. Google Analytics is a fallback that I will use when I can’t update the site with a couple of weeks of Eightfold Logic data.
Part III… Coming Soon!
In Part III, I’ll go into detail on what to do with all this data. This is the real key to understanding what your website is providing to you. Getting suffocated with statistical information is all good if you know how to read the data and how to use the data to develop a plan from which to apply to the website for increased traffic, leads and conversions.
Rebuilding Your Website? Know the Risks and Be Prepared
This is a scenario that I’ve seen materialize far too often in my time as a search engine marketer. A client commits significant time and resources towards a large scale website redesign and development, only to see the inbound traffic to the new site virtually disappear on launch day.
Phones stop ringing, lead funnel shrinks to nearly nothing and everyone is left scratching their head after such a positive design and development phase.
The effect is instant and with the right planning and transition strategy, this ‘traffic tragedy’ can be averted.
Why Does Your Search Engine Traffic Disappear?
When a website undergoes a redevelopment, nine times out of ten the page names will change (fix this forever by using extentionless URL’s). A search engines’ inventory is made up of web pages, or more specifically, precise URL’s. Once you change those URL’s the page which Google has indexed will break resulting in a 404 Not Found error when clicked. All of the historical value and reputation built up over time is gone in an instant. The only constant is the domain name itself which does not change and so (as long as the content is preserved) will retain its pre launch traffic volume.
Identify Where the Website Value Is
The first step in protecting your historical traffic equity is to know how to identify it. This is accomplished by a combination of website traffic statistics (search engine traffic) and tools which identify inbound links from other websites also known as Back Links. If you don’t know how you are tracking your website, or know that you don’t have Google Analytics running, do it now! Really, stop reading and set that up!
Welcome back! The search engines themselves provide many free and useful tools which will provide most of this information. These tools are used to recover, among other things, the following key information:
- Which pages are receiving search engine traffic
- Which pages are linked to from other websites (back links)
- Do you have an RSS feed which is subscribed to?
- Also watch for traffic to Videos, PDF documents and other multi-media
Tell the Search Engines Where the New Pages Are
By using a series of precise redirects using a particular search engine friendly method (the 301 Redirect Savior) you will preserve the traffic and the majority of the value from the previous URL. This also transfers a marginal amount of reputation or PR built up from back links as well.
Transitioning a website is quite a time consuming process which includes building a list of high value pages which receive search engine and direct traffic as well as which pages are linked to from other websites, arguably the #1 search engine ranking factor. Further if you ignore the other Ranking signals such as content, titles, linking structure and page hierarchy you risk a longer term reduction in search engine traffic as Google realized the change in content and drops your rankings for certain pages. That last bit is a discussion for 10 more blog posts.
Rebuilding a Website? Ask the Right Questions
So if you find yourself in the middle of a website redevelopment, be sure to ask your developers if they have a Website Transition Plan in place and have them elaborate. Below are some key factors to consider:
- A redirect strategy which places a global redirect back to the Homepage is not an appropriate strategy. You will lose your rankings and value for your secondary web pages.
- Redirect pages on a 1 to 1 basis to maintain relevance, back links and bookmarks. Content between these pages should also be of the same topic.
- Do not rely on default website ‘stats’. Low level metrics such as Hits and Referrers from ‘log based’ analytics can often be skewed and inaccurate. Google analytics is a minimum starting point for researching your traffic accurately.
- Use the Search Engines’ webmaster tools interfaces to assist in further data collection.
More Information: http://www.falcon-software.com
About the Author
Jade Carter is Falcon-Software’s SEO Analyst. Over the last 7-years he has helped small to enterprise level clientele such as Encyclopedia Britannica, Birks Jewelers, and Safe Auto Insurance experience the full potential of their online presence by identifying exactly what it is that the client expects from their website and developing realistic and relevant traffic.
SEO – Can You Say That With a Straight Face?
Or perhaps a more appropriate statement could be; Has the phrase ‘SEO’ become a ‘4 letter word’?
In the 7+ years that I have spent optimizing websites and businesses, I have seen the acronym ‘SEO’ become somewhat alienated in the online community specifically in the perceived value from owners. The marketing professionals understand the need for SEO, it is the individuals that need it the most which still greatly misunderstand what it is that we’re trying to accomplish. I think I can speak for many of the professional SEO’s out there that there is still rampant confusion about what we do and so we are often pushed to the periphery of critical marketing decisions.
Did you just say $EO?
Think of the feeling you get when a wobble from your steering wheel convinces you to utter the word ‘mechanic’. Do you start to bristle with anger as feelings of heavy monetary losses and visions of hundred dollar bills flutter helplessly out your car window while you wobble down the street? What does the common web user or site owner imagine when the phrase SEO is batted around? Scepticism and disbelief are most likely common perceptions for business people with a familiarity of the ‘word’ but might be fairly naive to the accurate and up to date definition.
Search Engine Optimization? Actually No.
SEO technically stands for Search Engine Optimization however when I attempt to explain what SEO is I find that I tend to contradict that statement while describing what modern SEO practices entail. In essence, forget about ‘search engines’ and ‘optimize’ the user experience. Only when you place the value of the visitors experience ahead of ‘search engines’ will you be rewarded with sustained, long term search engine traffic.
Ironically, the key to SEO success is to forget about search engines per se, and focus on the visitors experience on the website. Only when your visitors experience simple and logical navigation, appropriately displayed content using lead-in headings which funnel logically into text links to other pages, clearly identified ‘touch points’ or actions that you wish visitors to take and language that speaks ‘to’ the visitor, will the search engines start to reward your efforts (ignoring the back linking for the moment).
Is This Good for SEO?
It is for those precise reasons that I often frustrate people looking for a yes or no answer to questions that end with “Is that good for SEO?” My response is usually some rehashed version of “Does this item increase any aspect of the visitor’s ability to understand and interact with the website”.
When gauging whether an On Page strategy is good for SEO consider the following questions;
For instance Meta Keywords have long been ignored by search engines, however some SEO’s and Website Developers continue to waste valuable time populating them. Meta Keywords tags are not seen by visitors on the webpage, whether used in an HTML attribute or otherwise. They are also not used as signals on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP’s). You can also find Google explicitly supporting this in their help documents.
Page Titles, also known as Title Meta Tags (although they aren’t Meta Tags at all) are a different story. Title Tag content is used by search engines to populate the main heading link that is clicked on in the search engine results in order to visit each web page. On the webpage itself, the Title Tag is often populated dynamically using content from the page itself or hand written by the site owner. The Page Title is also used by the browser to label the browser window or tab and to build the Bookmark Title. These prominent signals are easily detected by visitors and so are used to identify the contextual topic of the web page. This strategy is definitely good for SEO.
If you have questions about how SEO can increase the performance of your website, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment or call us directly.
Falcon-Software places heavy influence on the user experience with our campaigns, building a strong relationship with the client first in order to fully understand who the ideal visitor is before developing a long term plan for success.