SEO Consult Blog

When making a major change to existing content it is important to remember that it could have knock on effects for your conversion rates and for search engine rankings and other marketing efforts. Planning and preparation, where necessary, will certainly help ensure that the change is as seamless as possible and that rankings do not drop. Changing web content is usually a safe and acceptable process but it will certainly pay dividends to track the data and ensure that ranking and traffic doesn’t drop, and conversions remain around the same level.

Tracking Data

Before beginning any major changes on a website it is always advisable to record figures and keep a back up of the old version. If figures drop too drastically for an extended period of time then you can use the back up copy of the old content to help regain previous results. As well as tracking search engine results and traffic levels you should consider conversion rates, visit length, and any other data you track.

Major Changes In Performance

Most website changes will result in some changes to your site’s performance (be it your traffic levels or your conversion rates) but these don’t necessarily have to be negative or indeed long term. The search engine results are constantly changing because of new links, new pages, altered pages, and deleted content. Results have been known to settle down after some initial changes so some time should be given to ensure that this isn’t the case.

Accessibility And Navigation

The important thing when changing any content is first ensuring that the new content is accessible. This means that human visitors’ browsers can load the pages quickly and that as many people using different browsers, operating systems, and systems are able to view the content. This is particularly important for Flash and other animated design. Ensure that search engine spiders are able to crawl all pages and index the content you’ve added.

Clean, Compliant Code

All new content should be appropriately formatted and also use W3C compliant coding practices. This further helps ensure good site accessibility and keeps the code on your site clean. Clean code will cause fewer problems over a broad range of different settings. Different browsers and operating systems have different requirements and compliant code should avoid any problems.

Performance Tracking

Tracking performance is an important step in any SEO project, as it is with any form of marketing. In the case of search engine optimisation you should certainly track ranking for your best performing keywords and total search engine traffic. By using clean code and ensuring that any changes are ethical you can also ensure the least impact on your site possible.

Changing Content And SEO

Effective search engine optimisation will drive targeted traffic, resulting in active visitors. Targeted visitors like this will be more inclined to make purchases, click links, and remain on the pages of your site. Whatever the desired action on your website, targeted traffic from organic search engine result pages is beneficial for your site.

Choosing an SEO, or Search Engine Optimiser is a big decision because while
a good and ethical SEO will help to improve search engine rankings, traffic,
and potential revenue, an unethical or ineffective service will not. Using
unethical SEO practices can see a site banned from the search engine results
and it certainly won’t drive any traffic under any circumstances. The ineffective
SEO is unlikely to yield the kind of results that you could expect. SEO is
a long term project and you should give any SEO provider ample chance to perform
but if they don’t then it might be time to look around for another SEO service.

More Than Cost

Obviously, price is an important factor in every business decision and that’s
no different when choosing an SEO. While this is true though, the final decision
shouldn’t be made based entirely on the cost of the service. Always ensure
that a service is ethical, produces results, and does so in a clear and easy
to understand manner.

Easy Communication

Communication is important. Your SEO should be available for you to discuss
your plans and the details of the SEO project. SEO can be applied to virtually
every page of a website, and you should consider the impact on search engines
whenever you add or make major changes to content. As such, you will need to
discuss changes with the SEO. At the very least, this will usually provide
details of the most advisable way to proceed.

Guaranteeing Results

There is no way that an SEO can guarantee that you will receive the top spot,
or even top three, in Google or any of the other major search engines. Performance
related guarantees that return a portion of the fee in exchange for not reaching
top positions is acceptable on the other hand. Always remember that there are
no SEO secrets, as such. Effective SEO requires regular and ongoing work largely
relying on tried and tested methods as well as some innovative solutions to
existing problems.

Targeted Traffic

While traffic is the immediate goal of an SEO campaign, an SEO should ensure
that they use targeted keywords that provide targeted traffic. Generic keywords
and key phrases may produce a huge amount of traffic, especially for some industries,
but the traffic that is produced is unlikely to be responsive to your marketing
and sales messages.

Ethical SEO

Also ensure that an SEO firm uses acceptable guidelines based on what the
search engines believe to be acceptable. This helps prevent any penalties that
a page can be hit with by the search engines for using unethical methods and
failing to follow the guidelines provided. These penalties can range from a
drop in position to being completely banned from that search engine’s index.

Choosing An SEO Provider

Choosing an SEO should not be based solely on financial factors, although
these obviously play an important role in any business decision. Using an unethical
or ineffective SEO firm your web pages may be penalised in the search results
or, worse still, see your site completely banned.