A website cautionary tale...

FredC

Village Idiot
Joined
Jul 13, 2011
Messages
26,229
Gah. The text on that IS pretty lame. Will simply improving the text help, or is it more? (That's a yes/no question, rather than a query requesting you to tell me what else would be required).


The simple answer is yes but it isn't likely to be enough

all those "seo things", and there are many both on and off site, you do to get a site to rank also have to be done to area pages/subpages in a manner specific to that area

my approach to this situation has always been "I might be able to get you there" but unless you at at least appear to have discreet locations it is unlikely and becoming less so....especially in higher competition areas....


in some cases I've done individual websites with separate addresses and phone numbers.....they still do well but haven't changed in years..........they may suffer your fate if they did.......idk**




**actually looking at some of the sites I did way back that still rank highly across multiple locations I'm surprised they do given some of their faults like no ssl or mobile.......but age is a factor
 

roro

Member
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
1,198
Location
Wellington
Name
Ross Craig
Thanks for that Fred; that is one cool tool. I was able to look at our first website from back in 2003 when from memory we were about the only cc biz on line in our area. Longevity was definitely part of the Google logarithm as we stayed in the top 3 in a search for many years.
Thanks again
RoRo
 

FredC

Village Idiot
Joined
Jul 13, 2011
Messages
26,229
Thanks for that Fred; that is one cool tool. I was able to look at our first website from back in 2003 when from memory we were about the only cc biz on line in our area. Longevity was definitely part of the Google logarithm as we stayed in the top 3 in a search for many years.
Thanks again
RoRo


lots of other cool stuff there too other than the wayback machine (books, music, old recordings, etc)

 

Hoody

Supportive Member
Joined
Oct 24, 2007
Messages
6,347
Location
Bowling Green, Ohio
Name
Steven Hoodlebrink
@Joseph225 I have a few minutes to explain a few things. Although Fred did a great job as usual.

Blog posts - your blog posts weren't anything spectacular but were decent pieces of content. They're what I call "cornerstone content". Meaning they were old and developed some authority in the grand scheme of things because at one time it was the way to do well for SEO. However, that authority tanked when the publish date changed. To Google, it looks like a duplicate of an old piece of content and the algo doesn't like that. However, updating content with new information is the right approach but you should place an update notice at the bottom manually or sometimes your theme does it automatically depending on which you're using. This is why I suggested the export/import to preserve those dates. There is no use in going back and correcting the publish dates as that won't restore what was there, unfortunately. You were sort of being grandfathered in but that is completely gone now.

Site structure change - any time you redesign a website it is important to try and keep the same site/URL structure. If you're changing the site structure or say changing a "power page" URL - for example: domain dot com/carpet-cleaning to domain dot com/carpet-cleaning-city-state. You want to ensure you redirect /carpet-cleaning to /carpet-cleaning-city-state to pass the authority to the new page. This tells Google hey this old page that you like is now this page so treat it the same as the old one. It is apparent that didn't happen when the new website went live. It doesn't make sense to forward a page to another page if the intent was to delete however in some cases I'll forward an old blog page that got scrapped to the homepage. Otherwise, if you intended on deleting it, you should go into Google Search Console and request that the deleted page be removed from the Google Index otherwise it throws a 404 error and that is really bad for on-page SEO. For easy 301 redirecting look up the Wordpress Plugin called Redirection, it makes it easy to redirect and will also show you all of your 404 errors and how many times a bot or someone tried to access those pages. Don't worry about css and js files but any core pages you want to watch for.

Going forward - I would focus your efforts on posting to GMB and social media. Share job photos, share company news, share when you attend industry events, share quick spotting tips, copy/paste reviews from clients. Just make sure you mix it up on the type of posts you're doing so you're not boring. Better yet, spend an hour planning it out. There's a nifty way to link directly to the Google review you copy/paste and with a little Googling you can figure that out. Post at least twice a week and that will do way more than the blog posts and city pages you created were doing. It will take time to gain traction but stay with it. Talk about doing jobs in other surrounding cities and if you feel inclined to recreate those city pages. Feel free to link to them directly in the post or use the Learn More button option in the GMB post section.

Bonus tip: find an automated software that you can pre-schedule your social media postings. There are several like Hootsuite, Buffer and many others. Take advantage of their trial offers to see which interface you like, many even support GMB posting. You simply connect your social media pages, come up with the content, and they'll publish to all of the ones you connect with the supported media and text for that site. When you're bored in the winter you can come up with a whole strategy and pre-schedule it to post on autopilot to build traction for the busier months.
 

Joseph225

Member
Joined
Jan 30, 2012
Messages
159
@Joseph225 I have a few minutes to explain a few things. Although Fred did a great job as usual.

Blog posts - your blog posts weren't anything spectacular but were decent pieces of content. They're what I call "cornerstone content". Meaning they were old and developed some authority in the grand scheme of things because at one time it was the way to do well for SEO. However, that authority tanked when the publish date changed. To Google, it looks like a duplicate of an old piece of content and the algo doesn't like that. However, updating content with new information is the right approach but you should place an update notice at the bottom manually or sometimes your theme does it automatically depending on which you're using. This is why I suggested the export/import to preserve those dates. There is no use in going back and correcting the publish dates as that won't restore what was there, unfortunately. You were sort of being grandfathered in but that is completely gone now.

Site structure change - any time you redesign a website it is important to try and keep the same site/URL structure. If you're changing the site structure or say changing a "power page" URL - for example: domain dot com/carpet-cleaning to domain dot com/carpet-cleaning-city-state. You want to ensure you redirect /carpet-cleaning to /carpet-cleaning-city-state to pass the authority to the new page. This tells Google hey this old page that you like is now this page so treat it the same as the old one. It is apparent that didn't happen when the new website went live. It doesn't make sense to forward a page to another page if the intent was to delete however in some cases I'll forward an old blog page that got scrapped to the homepage. Otherwise, if you intended on deleting it, you should go into Google Search Console and request that the deleted page be removed from the Google Index otherwise it throws a 404 error and that is really bad for on-page SEO. For easy 301 redirecting look up the Wordpress Plugin called Redirection, it makes it easy to redirect and will also show you all of your 404 errors and how many times a bot or someone tried to access those pages. Don't worry about css and js files but any core pages you want to watch for.

Going forward - I would focus your efforts on posting to GMB and social media. Share job photos, share company news, share when you attend industry events, share quick spotting tips, copy/paste reviews from clients. Just make sure you mix it up on the type of posts you're doing so you're not boring. Better yet, spend an hour planning it out. There's a nifty way to link directly to the Google review you copy/paste and with a little Googling you can figure that out. Post at least twice a week and that will do way more than the blog posts and city pages you created were doing. It will take time to gain traction but stay with it. Talk about doing jobs in other surrounding cities and if you feel inclined to recreate those city pages. Feel free to link to them directly in the post or use the Learn More button option in the GMB post section.

Bonus tip: find an automated software that you can pre-schedule your social media postings. There are several like Hootsuite, Buffer and many others. Take advantage of their trial offers to see which interface you like, many even support GMB posting. You simply connect your social media pages, come up with the content, and they'll publish to all of the ones you connect with the supported media and text for that site. When you're bored in the winter you can come up with a whole strategy and pre-schedule it to post on autopilot to build traction for the busier months.
Thanks, man.
 

Mikey P

Administrator
Joined
Oct 6, 2006
Messages
112,308
Location
The High Chapperal
Yes. We all know how much you love yourself, Mikey. You tell us all the time.

Funny how some think that, usually the ones with delusions of grandeur and smarty pants.


Spend any real time with me and the self deprecation oozes out.


In other words Sir Joe, you're dead wrong.


But my blog is better than yours...
 

Desk Jockey

Member
Joined
Oct 9, 2006
Messages
64,833
Location
A planet far far away
Name
Rico Suave
Funny how some think that, usually the ones with delusions of grandeur and smarty pants.


Spend any real time with me and the self deprecation oozes out.


In other words Sir Joe, you're dead wrong.


But my blog is better than yours...
You don't love yourself?

I love myself.

I see nothing wrong with loving who you are...well I guess unless your an asshole. 🤔

Uhhh forget it, carry on. 😳
 

DON MUDGE

Member
Joined
Feb 5, 2018
Messages
11
Location
Danville KY
Name
Donald Mudge
Gah. The text on that IS pretty lame. Will simply improving the text help, or is it more? (That's a yes/no question, rather than a query requesting you to tell me what else would be required).
I use Joe Burnish Big West Marketing honest guy
 

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