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Content Refresh: Update outdated content, add new information, and improve formatting to make it more engaging and relevant to current trends.
SEO Audit: Conduct a thorough SEO audit to identify and fix issues such as broken links, outdated keywords, and poor site structure.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
-
A client rebranded a few years ago and doesn't want to be associated with it's old brand name. He wishes not to appear when the old brand is searched in Google, is there something we can do?
The problem is there was redirection between the old branded site and the new one, and now when you type in the name of the old brand, the new one comes up. I have desperately tried to convince this client there is nothing we can do about it, dozens of news articles crop up with the two brands together as this was a hot topic a few years ago, but just in case I missed something I thought I'd ask the community of experts here on Moz. An example for this would be Tyco Healthcare that became covidien in 2007. When you type tyco healthcare, covidien crops up here and there. Any ideas? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Netsociety0 -
Is a One Page Website template bad for SEO?
I have a website of a freelancer who is using a One Page template which includes the following section About Him Portfolio Resume I also got 5 sperate pages which are related to the keywords he wants to rank for. Will this be sufficient or should I suggest him to go for a separate website template?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iamgaurav12900 -
Old sitemaps after site migration.
Hi, I was wondering if it's safe to remove all the sitemaps from the old site in search console? It's been 3 months since site migration from http://sitea.com (301 redirected) to http://siteb.com. Therefore, can I delete the old sitemap from the http://sitea.com from search console? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ggpaul5620 -
Best Sitemap for Large Website
i have more than 3500 pages on my website. Please let me know the best sitemap plugin for my website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Michael.Leonard1 -
Good to Internal Link from Old Blog Posts?
I am working on a site which has good amount of content pages & blogposts. All blog posts & content pages have been indexed in google already since a long time. Will this be a good practice if I internally link to new pages from old pages or a few important pages from those old indexed content pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | welcomecure0 -
External links from banned websites
Currently working with a client that has seen his rankings diminish after the penguin update. I've manually analyzed all his 600 backlinks and identified approximately 85 external links from websites that have been banned by Google. How do these sites affect his current rankings? Should i just disavow all these links using the Google disavow tool? Any comments would be highly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nick_Johansson0 -
Tips to increase page rank in 2012
Can you suggest what are the ways to increase page rank of website and blogs? and according to current scenario, i can see google updating page rank anytime is it true?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | surajrathore0 -
Is cross-linking websites bad? What is your experience?
Today, I was watching video about Is cross-linking websites bad? on Google Webmaster YouTube channel. I've big confusion on this subject because, I have made big changes on this factor. I have removed my website link from two websites. Both websites are top to link my website. But, I have removed it due to certain issue. I have hyperlink following page with Patio Umbrellas keyword. http://www.vistastores.com/patio-umbrellas I know that, I have to maintain my inbound link statistics and that's why I'm going to add my website link with Patio Umbrellas text link to my clients' websites. I have already added it to certain clients' websites and going to add in another clients' websites. You can review my link in footer. http://www.tikitorchbargains.com/ http://www.firepitbargains.com/ http://www.curtainrodbargains.com/ These websites have similar subject to my website. Now, websites' subject is totally different to my website where I will my text link in footer. After big explanation:: 🙂 I have one big question. Will it help me to out rank well with Patio Umbrellas keyword? Do you have any experience about positive performance or negative performance? Is it advisable or not? If no so why? 🙂 Thanks... watch?v=ufGw65-1je8 6987059809_b6bf3c7335_z.jpg watch?v=ufGw65-1je8 6987059809_b6bf3c7335_z.jpg watch?v=ufGw65-1je8
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit0