Client Worried About SEO Decline After Site Redesign
-
Hi,
We're in the process of redesigning www.directvillasflorida.com/ for a client. The client has recently expressed concern that their rankings may drop off after the change. Here are some facts about the site:
- As you can see, the current homepage is _very _keyword heavy.
- They have a DA of 26 and are ranking #1 for 'florida villas', higher than their more authoritative competitors.
- They are also ranking #1 in the mobile search results, despite not being mobile-friendly.
- Their link profile is pretty average and the anchor texts are pretty keyword-rich
- 'florida villas' appears 30 times with a 4.41% keyword density
- 'florida' appears 66 times with a 3.31% density
The client has admitted keyword stuffing years ago and hasn't changed anything because it worked and still is working. In the site redesign, we've cut out a lot of the spammy, keyword-rich content and he's worried he'll suffer because of this.
Any ideas what to do here? It seems clear that the site is breaching Google's guidelines, but, for whatever reason, isn't being picked up by Google.
Cheers,
Lewis
N.B. The client is just paying us for a redesign, not SEO.
-
Do not worry about your keyword ratio just worry about creating high-quality content with somebody that has much better grammar and writing abilities and I. (I use Grammarly or dictate to a coworker when posting on a client's site.)
https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/best-practice/test-development-changes/
https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/tag/website-architecture/
here are no fewer than five ways to test changes before they even go live and have any impact on performance:
- Test site vs Live site: crawl a staging site and compare it to the live one
- Test robots.txt changes
- Test a new XML Sitemap
- Crawl the site with modified URLs
- Test the impact of removing parameters
now if you are rebuilding use HTTPS it is not a powerful ranking symbol now however it is very smart to pull off to Band-Aids at once
- https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/best-practice/the-zen-guide-to-https-configuration/
- https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/news/https-when-to-act/
if you add HTTPS via HTTP/2 or cloudflare do not set HSTS for more than a couple days when setting up the site.
https://mza.bundledseo.com/blog/http2-a-fast-secure-bedrock-for-the-future-of-seo
USE https://blog.cloudflare.com/enforce-web-policy-with-hypertext-strict-transport-security-hsts/
HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS), which could also help with speed issues on HTTPS.
See
please do not take offense to the chicken it is how I feel about myself.
Sincerely,
Thomas
-
Are you sure the keyword stuffing is why they rank, or are they ranking in spite of it?
There may not be an easy way to know without taking a deep breath and jumping in, just make sure you have the ability to roll everything back in the event it goes sideways.
-
Is that site really so phenomenal if no one sees it because SEO best practices weren't baked into the design?
-
Hi Josh,
Our redesign, on paper, will make the site much, much better. However, like I say, my main concern is that we'll reduce the amount of keywords the client has shoved on the homepage years ago. It seems, however, that this old school tactic of keyword-stuffing has worked and Google is letting him get away with it.
-
people that get hung up on keywords are a pain but you should be forthright and tell them yes they will most likely see a drop in traffic for a minimum of 3 to 4 months.
Use this reference
https://www.candidsky.com/blog/the-seo-2015-guide-to-website-migration/
sincerely,
Tom
-
Oh, I know, I was just highlighting the spammy nature of their use of 'Florida villas'.
-
In regards to the content i would try to worry more about writing naturally and for the user rather than "keyword density" generally most people stopped measuring this years ago.
-
"If someone was going to do a redesign for me, they should be able to tell me how their new design was going to be a huge kick up for my SEO, visitor engagement, sales, and more. Design changes should be done well enough that the website owner gets multiple bangs for the buck."
I completely disagree, I know some people who can design a phenomenal website, yet they don't know a thing about SEO. That's not their job, their job is to offer a highly converting and inviting website NOT help it rank. If I went to a designer who does everything then I should be very wary of their work as after all a jack of all trades is a master of none.
-
I hate these situations, its one of those 'for the long-term' cases.
Sure they rank well now, but eventually Google might/will penalise them. At the same time, you are not being employed for SEO and the client must make the final decision with all the facts. If you are being employed for SEO I would stand your ground a lot more. But as you are not you can simply offer your professional opinion and leave it to them.
Sure, if you cut out the SPAM they might loose rankings, but if you dont cut SPAM they might get penalised.
Your way, they become future proof, the risk is safe, monitored and means no penalty just rankings that can still be improved over a relatively short period.
Their way, the risk is dangerous, their rankings could be destroyed for a long time and it could happen at any time.
I would simply explain that good SEO is also 'preventative' not just 'responsive'. Get it in writing, and cover your own ass and let him make the decision.
-
Well, yes, we have. The new site will be responsive and won't be as keyword spammy. In theory, that should help their organic presence, but the spammy keywords might just be the reason why they're ranking so highly...
-
If someone was going to do a redesign for me, they should be able to tell me how their new design was going to be a huge kick up for my SEO, visitor engagement, sales, and more. Design changes should be done well enough that the website owner gets multiple bangs for the buck.
N.B. The client is just paying us for a redesign, not SEO.
In my opinion, design is part of SEO because on-page optimization, site navigation structure, visitor engagement, and conversion can all be improved by a well-done design, and each of them can have SEO benefits.
So, I would tell the client how the new design will have multiple benefits. How he is going to get his money back. I want a designer who can do this for me. I don't want a game of chance.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Website and seo for categories and pages
I have a website with a number of specific locations listed in a directory. The locations are in categories but i also have several pages with the same titles and descriptions. Will this be a problem when it comes to seo
On-Page Optimization | | twiguins0 -
Product Descriptions (SEO)
Hello, I sell products relating to wood. Although the products vary, I like to give description of the wood type for the customers who might not be familiar with it. Will it hurt my rankings to give the same descriptions for the same wood type as long as the majority of the description is different? Here is an example of the layout: 1. Different description for different products 2. The same short description for the same wood types (seen throughout multiple pages) Hopefully my question makes sense.
On-Page Optimization | | mattl992 -
More important SEO
Hello, I was wondering where my time is most valuable. I have a linking tree as follows: Main Site > Product > Specific Product Is the Product page more important to add SEO or is the end deep linked page "specific product" more important? I'm ready to hear the answers of whatever gives a better customer experience and both... Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | DiscGolfShopping0 -
SEO for EMD
Hi, I bought ForSaleInAZ.com for my real estate website. Google Keyword Tool estimate 301k local searches for that term. I would like to capitalize on this by building this site with good content. My question to you, besides the search being the URL, what is the best practice to specifically promote the "For Sale In AZ" phrase? Should it be in the Page Title, Meta Description, Content H1 & H2 tags, Image tag? Or, is it being in the URL good enough...so all I have to do is build good content? I understand not to over do it but I could use your advice. Can you please give me some suggestions/ guidelines to follow specifically to my EMD? SEO Expertise Level: I am comfortable and have the decent understanding but, by no means, an expert! Thanks, Carl
On-Page Optimization | | AmSupMktg0 -
Spanish version of site - best practice?
I need to create a Spanish version of an existing site. My idea was to have the Spanish content switch out the English content if the query string had something like ?l=es. It would also drop a cookie so that all other pages would switch out content as well. I do want the Spanish content to be indexed and rank in the search engines, though. I would include all of the Spanish versions (with the ?l=es) in the site map and link to them on every page with a link to the Spanish version. Does anyone have any experience with this? Is this a bad idea? Thanks! Tom
On-Page Optimization | | TomBristol0 -
Working on this site...
and wondering what is wrong in terms of on page SEO (basically just want some feedback on tips/changes to make) http://www.stevenholmesstudio.com/ I'm assuming that the title shouldn't be just the img file name..any suggestions for what it should be?
On-Page Optimization | | callmeed0 -
Site Speed Expert Referral Needed
We're looking for someone who can diagnose some site speed issues AND adjust the code, servers, etc. as needed. Does anyone know of an expert in this area?
On-Page Optimization | | BryanPhelps-BigLeapWeb0 -
Best SEO structure for blog
What is the best SEO page/link structure for a blog with, say 100 posts that grows at a rate of 4 per month? Each post is 500+ words with charts/graphics; they're not simple one paragraph postings. Rather than use a CMS I have a hand crafted HTML/CSS blog (for tighter integration with the parent site, some dynamic data effects, and in general to have total control). I have a sidebar with headlines from all prior posts, and my blog home page is a 1 line summary of each article. I feel that after 100 articles the sidebar and home page have too many links on them. What is the optimal way to split them up? They are all covering the same niche topic that my site is about. I thought of making the side bar and home page only have the most recent 25 postings, and then create an archive directory for older posts. But categorizing by time doesn't really help someone looking for a specific topic. I could tag each entry with 2-3 keywords and then make the sidebar a sorted list of tags. Clicking on a tag would then show an intermediate index of all articles that have that tag, and then you could click on an article title to read the whole article. Or is there some other strategy that is optimal for SEO and the indexing robots? Is it bad to have a blog that is too heirarchical (where articles are 3 levels down from the root domain) or too flat (if there are 100s of entries)? Thanks for any thoughts or pointers.
On-Page Optimization | | scanlin0