In Today's Issue
Search Engine Marketing
---> 6 Redesign SEO Secrets Your Developer May Not Know
High Rankings Happenings
---> SEO Training Classes
---> New Lower Priced SEO Services!
---> Get Your Website Reviewed Now!
Twitter Question of the Week
---> How often do you think most websites should be redesigned?
Stuff You Might Like
---> 2010 SEO Class Dates Announced
Advanced SEO Forum Thread of the Week
---> Chopping and Changing Titles Frequently
Advisor Wrap-up
---> Ready for a New Decade? Introduction
Hey everyone!
Hope you're as busy and productive as we've been lately. I've been elbow-deep in SEO Redesign Consultations for the past few weeks, which prompted me to write today's article.
Enjoy! – Jill
Search Engine Marketing Issues
++6 Website Redesign SEO Secrets Your Developer May Not Know++
At the end of the year, many businesses start to think about redesigning their tired old website to breathe some new life into it. You may even be in the midst of a website redesign right now. If so, the first thing is to make sure you hire a design and development company that knows how to build the infrastructure of the website in a search engine crawler–friendly manner.
Beyond that, you need to address a number of additional SEO tactics before you get too deep into your redesign. The reason you need to keep SEO front and center during this time is twofold: so that you do not lose your previous traffic, but also so that you can gain additional targeted search engine visitors when the new site goes live.
Here are 6 SEO redesign secrets your developer may not know...ignore them at your own peril!
1. Creating Your SEO'd Site Architecture
Search engines look explicitly at how all your pages are linked together in order to determine their place within the site. Pages that are linked from every other page will be given more weight than those that are only linked from a few others. This is all considered a form of internal link popularity, or in Google language, internal PageRank.
Recommendation: During your redesign, don't bury too deeply within the site any content that was previously bringing targeted search engine traffic. Ensure that any informational content that will be focused on the more competitive keyword phrases (for example, product and service pages) is high up in your site hierarchy.
In addition, all content contained in a specific category should be cross-linked via some sort of sub-navigation within that section.
2. Categorization and Avoiding Duplicate Content
When people are seeking information from a search engine, they usually have a question, a problem, or a need for specific information. The search queries they use at Google and the other engines reflect this. The more ways you can categorize your content for the various target markets you serve, the better.
Recommendation: Be sure that all top-level pages answer the potential searcher's (your potential customers') questions, and that it's clear that your products and services can solve their problem. In addition, you also have to ensure that regardless of how someone found any piece of content on your site, they always end up at the same URL to avoid PageRank splitting and duplicate content issues.
For example, if a specific product can be classified as both a product and a service, it makes sense that it might be listed under both categories. However, the page (URL) that the potential customer eventually lands on, regardless of which category they started in, should always be the same.
3. New Content Management System and Changing URLS
If URLs must change in the redesign due to a new content management system or back-end coding, search engines may take some time to index the new URLs as well as give them the same weighting they gave the previous URLs due to URL age factors.
Recommendation: It's critical to 301-redirect all old URLs to their relative counterpart within the newly designed website. This will pass the link popularity of the old URLs to the new ones quickly, as well as ensure that site visitors don't receive 404-not-found errors.
This will be easier if the new URL naming is similar to the old one, because you can use automated methods. If URLs must change completely with no correlation to the names of the old URLs, and hand-redirects are required, you'll want to at least redirect all the top-level pages, as well as those that you're sure receive keyword traffic from search engines. But, ideally, every URL should be redirected if at all possible.
4. Coding of Navigation Menus
Links contained within the navigation of your website should be coded in a search engine–friendly manner so that they are visible and crawlable. Some DHTML and Flash menus are invisible to search engines, which causes the pages linked within them to not receive the internal link popularity they should receive.
Recommendation: Make sure all navigational menus are coded with CSS that is visible to search engines. In addition, avoid drop-down box links as the main form of navigation (CSS mouseovers are fine). You'll also want to ensure that all content can be reached by hard-coded links – don't force the user to go through any kind of search box menu because those are traditionally search engine unfriendly.
5. Custom HTML Elements
While some level of automation for titles, metas, headers, URLs, and alt attributes for images can be helpful, it's critical that your new website's content management system allow you to create custom descriptions for these as well.
Recommendation: Make sure the content management system has fields for custom title tags, meta descriptions, heading tags, etc. There should be no limit to the number of characters allowed in these fields either, because every page may need a different number of words and characters.
6. Session IDs and Other Tracking Links
It's best not to use session IDs to track visitors, but if your system must use them, you'll only need to feed the "clean" URLs to the search engine spiders – otherwise, they may get caught in an infinite loop, indexing the same content under multiple URLs.
You'll also want to avoid any sort of campaign tracking links appended to URLs because these can split your link popularity by causing your content to be indexed under multiple URLs.
Recommendation: If this type of tracking is inherent in your system, use the canonical link element to maintain one URL for every page of content.
Don't be surprised if your developer isn't happy to receive some of these "secrets." He or she may feel that their authority is being usurped or their creativity is being hindered. Just remember that it's your website that you're paying them to create in a way that will make you the most money possible. Let your developer know up-front that these things are non-negotiable. If they tell you that they can't do any of the above, start looking around for a new developer – ASAP!
While there will always be a few unexpected bugs to work out when your site goes live, you won't have to be afraid of losing your search engine visitors as long as you know what you're doing. We've successfully helped many companies through this transition without any glitches. At the end of the process, there's nothing like the feeling of having your beautiful new website launched. But more than that, there's great comfort in knowing that the people looking for what you offer will continue to be able to easily find you in the search engines.
Jill
Share your comments and thoughts here.
P.S. If anyone would like to republish the above article, please email me your request and where it will reside, and I'll send you a short bio you can use with it for your site.
Twitter Question of the Week ++How often do you think most websites should be redesigned?++
CalebHowe: It depends on the type of site. Brochure-ware, blog, news, shop. Every two years at extreme outside for all though.
BarryWise: A site which is being maintained well (daily/weekly) shouldn't need a redesign very often – every couple years maybe.
CopywriterMaven: When visitors begin to complain that they can't do/find/get stuff that they think they should be able to easily.
leebrinckley: Redesigns are a necessary part of brand evolution, whether it be simple layout changes or design overhaul – 1 to 3 years.
allisonkessler: Review your website design EVERY YEAR. Get outside opinions. If your design's still effective, that's great!
bk_cox: Our owners are strict in some sort of small redesign every 6 months. Every year or two a serious overhaul takes place.
forestsoftware: I have just redesigned my site for the first time in 5 years – follow the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" rule.
RNSesq: No more than 1x a year. If I check something daily I like continuity. Too much change may lose me as a visitor. Tempered with a FWIW & IMO.
ETeare: Major redesign – 2 years. But, always be testing.
terryvanhorne: No answer because every site is unique. Content, seasons (christmas decor?), products and sales cycle drive design changes.
DerrickWheeler: When there is opportunity for improved customer experience & conversion rate that exceeds the expense of the redesign.
Jill's comment: Wow, some of you guys are hard core! As a company who rolled out a completely new design 2 years ago, I can't imagine going through that process again so soon. Seems like just yesterday. Of course, ours is working for us, and we do review each page on a regular basis to make sure it's up to date. Our previous site was up for a good 7 years I think...okay, maybe that was pushing it just a little!
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Share your comments and thoughts here.
Stuff You Might Like ++2010 SEO Class Dates Announced++
We've set up a couple of new in-person SEO training classes for 2010. The High Rankings training classes are like no other in that they are limited to only 6 people whose websites are all reviewed by me beforehand and integrated into the training program.
You'll receive in-person consulting on your company's website, as well as SEO training to learn how to move forward with your optimization strategy. I will teach you which SEO tactics are important to focus your energies on, and which are a just a waste of your time.
Join us on either March 12 or April 16, 2010, in our SEO training classroom just outside of Boston. As seats are limited to 6 per class, they will sell out, so please plan accordingly.
Learn more about our SEO training.
Advanced Forum Thread of the Week ++Chopping and Changing Titles Frequently++
Another SEO myth dispelled...yeah!
Chopping and Changing Titles Frequently
Advisor Wrap-up
That's all for today!
Can you believe next week is xmas already? Where did the month go? In fact, where did the year go? No wait, where the heck did the decade go? Seems like only yesterday we were preparing for ole Y2K!
So much has happened already in the 21st century, I can't wait to see what this next decade brings. Look for an end-of-the-decade review of SEO in our next issue.
We're taking a small holiday break for our annual Florida trek to visit my grandmother. She's 101 now! Rather than spending much time in the Ft. Lauderdale area, we're going to drive down to the Keys and see what it has in store. Should be fun!
Hope you enjoy your holidays and don't get too stressed out about 'em.
Catch you next time! – Jill
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