It never fails, that novice web developers and clients alike are not prepared for the consequences of making major changes or overhauling an existing, established website.
I have seen first hand the damage that can be done to websites rankings and revenue when you let just anyone start playing around with the content and code. The biggest mistake is usually made by inexperienced, or unknowledgeable developers/site owners who have no clue how to protect against the loss of existing site rankings. That being said, even experienced web designers don’t always recognize that care must be taken when redesigning an existing website.
What is the number one mistake?
The number one mistake is really simple. People fail to take into account existing file names. Pretty basic, but one of the most important parts of a redevelopment project. Clueless developers change a site over from filename.html to a filename.php or from a filename.php to a filename.asp; whatever, not realizing they just wiped out a well established and potentially well trusted document from the website. They can do everything else right, from usability to look and feel, calls to action and even the site based SEO, but if they screw this up, you get to start 5 steps back from where you were coming from. Hence why we hear “What happened to my websites rankings?” after the fact.
Now, 301 redirects are a great tool and are a must in such circumstances, however, you are not going to get the full mojo of these redirects any time soon and in most instances, a redirect is simply not necessary.
When you are making these types of major changes to a website, you absolutely have to do your homework. It starts first with understanding the link profile of the existing site you’re working on. Those citations, and where they are pointing, determine how you are going to develop the project out to maximize results.
Most times, an established website has very few link citations. This makes the process really straight forward and why many experience web designers make this mistake. As an example, we just completed the Genesis Financial Management project that launched December 2008. This project had a major overhaul on the entire website. Working with a well established site like this is risky business. They have a well established link profile and of course, those beautiful sitelinks from Google that any topical authority wants to see.
Regardless, we moved the site from an windows server to a linux server. We changed the entire profile of the site, to include every page name and file type association (from .asp to .shtml, .php & .html) and added a large amount of new and topically relevant content. Huge change.
I am here to tell you, again, if you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s risky business to try and educate yourself on the fly. Transitions like this absolutely need to be planned and well thought out. Otherwise, boom, you are going to potentially cost your client a lot in lost potential revenue. Not something you want to do.
The result? Two weeks after launch of the fully re-developed web project, the client had their sitelinks back and the website didn’t miss a beat in traffic. The most beneficial elements were the expanded reach, topically, and we made the website more search engine friendly. Now we have a site prepared to rank in each of the major search engines. All that is missing are more of those beautiful topically relevant authority citations that many of their competitors have.
When re-developing a website and making major changes, it’s assumed you know what you’re doing with site based SEO and web design itself. Make sure you or your developer investigates the link profile of the site you are working on before you start developing your new pages. Where these citations are coming from (think authority and trust) and where they are pointing to will determine the flexibility you will have in file type decisions.
If you do this, you will save yourself, and your client, a lot of heartache, stress and related problems.
Until Next Time.
George Chaney
President
SEO King, Inc.
