Changing design for a client. SEO concerns.
-
Hi there!
A client requested me to change the look of his website entirely. It currently ranks #16 on Google with one of their main keywords.
My problem is:
The current site was made in a CMS I'm not familiar with and all of its pages urls are not SEO friendly (EX: http://www.mysite.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=49&Itemid=95).
It is the first time I have come up with this situation so I would appreciate any tips or links to useful information. I tried searching in SEOmoz and came up with nothing. I'm sure this is a common problem though.
Since they want a static website, for starters their page extensions will change from .php to .html I'm not 100% sure but I think this will be a problem for their current ranking in Google.
Any ideas?
Edit: I forgot to mention that all of the backlinks this site has points to their hompage as www.mysite.com, I guess this is good.
-
Thanks a lot for your response Dave. I'm now confident thanks to the responses on what should I do to solve my issue.
-
Eblan, 301 redirects are the way to go.
Be aware that when doing 301 redirects you might temporarily lose rankings (if the internal pages rank), but in your case I would expect not only a quick recovery, but a rankings improvement due to a better URL format.
-
I know it doesn't sound very good but they only have 10 backlinks, and I doubt they are paid.
It seems the previous designer used a template, I am not familiar with the CMS they are using. It's not Drupal, Joomla or Wordpress (I forgot the name but has a sun in the logo).
I will follow your advice on the 301 redirects for sure and erasing the extensions using .htaccess.
Thanks a lot for your response!
-
What is the type of CMS? Sometimes small sites that are manageable and not constantly updated are easier just to handle as html pages. Drupal for instance is a nightmare for a layman to work on and overkill for a small site.
You should be able to make SEO friendly URLs in the CMS without changing the CMS though. I would look into that first.
Don't add the html extension you don't need it. All the old URLs should 301 to the new URLs. Also the CMS might be able to handle that or you can do it in .htaccess. It should cause no drop in rankings.
It's actually not really good that all of the pages are linking to the homepage, but it's OK as long as they aren't paid links. You should look at the backlink profile.
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
-
Are provincial third-level domains bad for SEO?
My prospect's domain ends in ".on.ca" (Ontario, Canada). The structure of their site is companyname.on.ca (main page) and all other pages are sub-folders (companyname.on.ca/page-name-1 All pages are no more than two levels deep. I'm wondering if anyone knows if the provincial sub-domain (.on.ca) presents an SEO challenge?
Web Design | | 22Eighteen1 -
Is it okay to design different mobile site for different browsers
Hi, Is it okay to design different mobile site for different browsers on same url. The content of the site will also be different on different browsers. Will it be treated as black hat by Google. The mobile site & desktop site has same url across devices & browsers. Regards
Web Design | | vivekrathore0 -
How to add SEO Content to this site
Hi Great community and hope you guys can help! I have just started on a SEO project for http://bit.ly/clientsite , the clients required initial KPI is Search Engine Rankings at a fairly low budget. The term I use for the site is a "blurb site", the content is thin and the initial strategy I want to employ to get the keyword rankings is to utilize content. The plan is to: add targeted, quality (user experience & useful) and SEO content on the page itself by adding a "read more" link/button to the "blurb" on the right of the page (see pink text in image) when someone clicks on the "read more", a box of content will slide out styled much the same as the blurb itself and appear next to and/or overlay over the blurb and most of the page (see pink rectangle in image) Question: Is this layer of targeted , quality (user experience & useful) and SEO content (which requires an extra click to get to it) going to get the same SEO power/value as if it were displayed traditionally on the initial display? If not, would it be better to create a second page (2<sup>nd</sup> layer) and have the read more link to that and then rel-canonical the blurb to that 2<sup>nd</sup> page, so that all the SEO passes to this expanded content and the second page/layer is what will show up in the rankings? Thanks in advance qvDgZNE
Web Design | | Torean0 -
How can i embed my video into a table using SEO embed setting?
We use Wistia.com to embed our videos. They have different options for embed settings and we prefer to use the SEO embed setting, however, when we use that setting we aren't able to insert the video in a table side by side with another image or text. When we try, the video jumps out of the table and the table gets (for lack of a better work) out of wack. When we embed the video with the iframe embed setting, the video can be placed in a table with no issues, but then we don't get the SEO credit. We have our site in wordpress. I'm not sure if that has something to do with the tables getting messed up. Check out this link to see an example of how we want the video to show up. http://www.3000doorhangers.com/ Any suggestions as to how we can use the SEO embed setting within a table as shown in the above link?
Web Design | | JimDirectMailCoach0 -
Changing template and loosing visits should I role back
Hi all I am working on the website which does not have a user-friendly template. I decided to change the templet and I was, so careful to have all the links and content exactly as before. Since 2 days a go website visis dropped completely it is zero visits per day compare to about 100 before! Should I roll back to the old template or does it happend because of the weekend ? Also I checked ranking it did not changed!!
Web Design | | hamidre130 -
Wordpress/ Insert Tables/ SEO
I'm using Wordpress to create websites and blogs. I have limited (non-existent) HTML Coding knowledge. I'm looking to insert tables within my pages with information. Inside of these tables I want certain names to link to another page with more specific information about that name. I'm using a plugin called "WP Tables Reloaded" it simple helps you to create aesthetically pleasing tables without needing to know HTML Code or CSS. The issue is... when you create this table and insert it to the post, the only thing that shows on the sites back-end page is the table I.D. and the only thing that shows in the HTML is the tables I.D. It looks like this... [table id=2 /] I don't think search engines will be able to crawl this table, thus I won't be receiving any credit for the links being used within the table. Am I right about this?
Web Design | | AndySolo0 -
Website design for non-coders
Hi All Anyone any experience with using Headway Themes for wordpress. How does it compare to Artisteer 3 for ease of use for a non-coder. Does "Headway Themes" really allow for the designing of sharp business wordpress websites for people with no coding skills as it claims. Thanks Peter
Web Design | | peterds0 -
Hosting/design company that is both cheap and has a nice partner package. Any ideas?
I need to signon with a hosting/design company that is both cheap and has a nice partner package. Any ideas?
Web Design | | christinarule0