Client Worried About SEO Decline After Site Redesign
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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.
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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://moz.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
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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.
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Is that site really so phenomenal if no one sees it because SEO best practices weren't baked into the design?
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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.
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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
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Oh, I know, I was just highlighting the spammy nature of their use of 'Florida villas'.
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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.
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"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.
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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.
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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...
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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.
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