Any Tips for Reviving Old Websites?
-
Hi,
I have a series of websites that have been offline for seven years. Do you guys have any tips that might help restore them to their former SERPs glory?
Nothing about the sites themselves has changes since they went offline. Same domains, same content, and only a different server. What has changed is the SERPs landscape. I've noticed competitive terms that these sites used to rank on the first page for with far more results now. I have also noticed some terms result in what seems like a thesaurus similar language results from traditionally more authoritative websites instead of the exact phrase searched for. This concerns me because I could see a less relevant page outranking me just because it is on a .gov domain with similar vocabulary even though the result is not what people searching for the term are most likely searching for.
The sites have also lost numerous backlinks but still have some really good ones.
-
We would highly recommend writing very high-quality evergreen content marketing.
We would also recommend building very high quality do follow no follow backlinks.
You must also make sure that your web design company designs a website, which offers a good user experience, so it's simple for shoppers to use the website.
-
Content Refresh: Update outdated content, add new information, and improve formatting to make it more engaging and relevant to current trends.
SEO Audit: Conduct a thorough SEO audit to identify and fix issues such as broken links, outdated keywords, and poor site structure.
Mobile Optimization: Ensure your website is mobile-friendly, as more users are accessing the internet through mobile devices.
Speed Optimization: Improve page loading speed by optimizing images, minifying CSS and JavaScript files, and using caching techniques.
Backlink Analysis: Review and disavow low-quality or spammy backlinks while seeking opportunities to acquire high-quality backlinks from reputable sources.
User Experience Enhancement: Enhance user experience by improving navigation, implementing clear calls-to-action, and optimizing for readability.
Social Media Integration: Promote your website through social media channels to increase visibility and attract more traffic.
Update Design: Modernize the website design to reflect current design trends and improve overall aesthetics.
Regular Updates: Commit to regularly updating the website with fresh content, news, or blog posts to keep visitors engaged and encourage return visits.
Analytics Monitoring: Use website analytics tools to monitor traffic, user behavior, and conversion rates, and make data-driven decisions to optimize performance.
By implementing these strategies, you can breathe new life into your old website and improve its visibility, usability, and overall effectiveness.
-
Improving the Organic SEO for on an old company website, is the same SEO, as you would apply to a brand new company website; that is white hat seo.
you do need high-quality content marketing and good-quality backlinks. We own a summerhouse company, and this is how we got the business on the first page of Google.
-
If you are reviving an old website make sure it is mobile friendly. Then you will need to refresh the content and update page titles and meta descriptions. Also make sure you add new content regularly.
-
That's a good question and I'd agree - I imagine that references to your website in published books online could be treated similarly to mentions across the web. Whether Google gives it any extra weight or not is unclear, but I'd agree that the implication is that a mention in a published book could carry some weight.
-
Thank you for the replies. They give me more hope because I was thinking along similar lines.
I certainly plan on reaching out to the authors of old articles that lost link, but I am not so sure sometimes. One of the old websites specifically got its coverage from being controversial so I am not sure if they unlinked due to it being down or due to complaints from people pointing out how they were helping it by linking to it. I have been noticing articles like https://moz.com/learn/seo/backlinks and I would hate to risk losing mentions on high quality sites by drawing attention to new editors that might just delete the articles entirely.
Another question I have related to mentions is mentions in books. I have noticed a site of mine showing up in Google Books from a couple of published books discussing it. Does that help SEO like a brand mention on a high quality site?
I would think that Google would consider sites mentioned in published books to be more authoritative than ones just mentioned in blogs or news stories.
-
Hi there,
I'd suggest a few things:
1. If you have old analytics data or log file data to show you which content performed best when the site was last live, take a look at that and prioritise restoring and updating the content which worked well previously.
2. Go through the content and update with fresh information, data, images, links etc to give everything a freshen up. Don't worry if content is still relevant and evergreen, but just do some checks to make sure.
3. Once you've updated the content and you're happy with it, generate some new XML sitemaps and submit to Google Search Console to prompt Google to crawl the pages again and get them into the index.
4. In addition, perhaps submit the homepage and a few key pages to Google Search Console for crawling and indexing.
5. Once the pages are indexed, keep an eye on Search Console to see how pages are performing and use this data to update the most popular pages.
6. In terms of links, if you can restore any valuable lost ones by reaching back out to the websites, letting them know that the site has relaunched and seeing if they can restore the links, that may give it a nudge too.
I hope that helps!
Paddy
-
Hi,
As previously stated by seotoolshelp5 with addition of
1. Check for any issues with dead links leading to this websites
2. Check crawling errors
3. check website speed and improve it if necessary
4. Prioritize mobile version (if you don't have one, create it)
That's all for now what I can think of.
-
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Moving my website to Wordpress, what are the possible consequences?
I am moving my website to WordPress after years. I am curious to know what the best route to maintain as much SEO value as possible would be. We have a lot of 301 redirects currently, and we will maintain those, but what else should we do or know? Thanks for any help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hwade0 -
Most important things for seo a travel website
Hello everyone a website working on travel field with this address : https://goo.gl/4gaoAn Let me know what do you think about it and please give me some advises about it get improve on google rankings. If you be able to take time and give me some advises based on what you see on the website, would be great for me. Also what would work best for me to have a great link building strategy after penguin 4.0 update? and what does my site lack right now? Thanks and waiting to hear from you asap.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BahadorGh0 -
Interlinking multiple websites
Most websites (for example) Zalando intern link there other CC tld domains to the root. For example: On http://www.zalando.nl/damesschoenen-pumps/ the links in the footer go to the other CC tld's: http://www.zalando.es , zalando.co.uk etc. Does anyone have experience with the fact if you would interlink to the relevant page on the other CC tld;s.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TjeerdvZ
For example: http://www.zalando.nl/damesschoenen-pumps/ links to http://www.zalando.co.uk/womens-shoes-heels/ in stead of linking to the homepage ?
In theory this would give more relevance intern linking. Looking forward to hear if anyone tried or experienced this and what the results where?0 -
SEO Audit Strategy For A Complex Website?
I am looking for a list of SEO audit tools and strategies for a complex website. The things I am looking for include (but not limited to): finding all the subdomains of the website listing all the 301's, 302's, 404's, etc finding current canonical tags suggesting canonical tags for certain links listing / finding all current rel=nofollow's on the website listing internal links which use & don't use 'www.' finding duplicate content on additional domains owned by this website I know how to find some of the items above, but not sure if my methods are optimal and/or the most accurate. Thank you in advance for your input!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CTSupp0 -
SEOmoz is only crawling 2 pages out of my website
I have checked on Google Webmaster and they are crawling around 118 pages our of my website, store.itpreneurs.com but SEOmoz is only crawling 2 pages. Can someone help me? Thanks Diogo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jslusser0 -
Old page redirection method ?
New web site uploaded .but still there are many old site's pages index in Google .I have created 301 redirect for similar page but what about rest of pages?as eg there is a page called www.xxxx.com/testimonial.php but new site don't have a testimonial pages so what i can delete old page and redirect to home page or what please advice me
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innofidelity0 -
Xml Sitemap for a large automobile website
Hello moz fellas, I need expert advice for PakWheels about xml sitemap generation. There are hundreds of thousands of pages (mostly USG) and these are increasing day by day. What is the best practice of controlling all these pages in xml format. Where can we generate sitemap.xml to submit in Google and Bing webmaster tools. Your input may help us in managing these URLs in an xml format. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | razasaeed1 -
Website Restructure - Good or Bad for SEO?
Due to the fact that we aren't in the #1 position, (dropped from #5 to page 2 - You have to love Devs and IT), our heads have hired a SEO Audit/Consultant company to review everything we are doing. I would like to post some of the things they are telling us to do, in which I don't 100% agree with and would like some other professional feedback. Especially since their site isn't marketed very well. http://www.trupanionpetinsurance.com Disclaimer: (this site was a complete nightmare when I started a year and a half ago. Yes, there are many issues that still need to be addressed.) Website Restructure I agree we totally need to restructure our website. I have no idea what the previous SEO guy was thinking. The new SEO company is telling us that the structure is a big part of SEO. I don't believe so, but besides a little loss in 301 juice, is there any other downfalls? Are there any real benefits? Similar question asked the other day (and answered by me): http://www.seomoz.org/q/don-t-want-to-lose-page-rank-what-s-the-best-way-to-restructure-a-url-other-than-a-301-redirect
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Trupanion1