New Website Potential G SEO Issues

[Mark_A]

Considering replacing a current site with a new more current one.

I am wondering what the implications are of a new sitemap, perhaps losing our *.php extension, and new pages and directories being also in new places?

The current site isn't presently winning in the G Organic stakes, so I would like to improve our potential G SEO performance with a new site.

If you could start again, what would you do?

[skaterpunk]

If you could start again, what would you do?

My main consideration would be to give a lot of thought into if "I have a voice amongst the growing masses anymore". This is especially true if the site needs to make money for the time and effort invested.

I recently went back to work and was reminded how much easier a job is for a steady paycheck. Not all of us are leaders, marketers, salesman, and online personalities. I definitely don't know how to game the system, and am not…and don't want to be a youtube personality, which seems to draw more ad revenue.

But, if I started over, I'd eliminate all the basic mistakes made along the way. (1) Get pages right from the beginning so I'm not creating redirects and 404's. (2) Use https straightaway. 3) Have a clear vision and message on what you want the site to be, without making it up as you go.

[goodroi]

This is probably going to attract many other curious people, so I'm going to reply more generally...
SEO has become so complicated and integrated with different online marketing influences, that some webmasters who were lucky 5 years ago have little chance to succeed today. Re-starting is not going to work for them. It's like trying to enter a Formula 1 race while driving a Toyota Corolla. No matter how many times you re-start the race, you are going to lose because the competition is on a different level. Hopefully each of you are super smart & has kept up with technology & best practices. Here is how I would restart an old project.

Start with a strong technical foundation. Not because its the most important but its the least fuzziest issue to address and tends to not need as much babysitting once its properly set-up the first time. Pick a solid hosting company. Install a good CMS to make life easier on managing the content. Make sure its secure from hackers in the backend and https on the front end for users. Really dial in your speed. Users (especially mobile users) love fast pages. If a webmaster can't do the technical fine tuning required for best speed, hire someone. Avoid redundant redirects & errors. Don't rely on sitemaps for indexing, thats better done by internal & external links. Make sure the site will perform well for desktop & mobile users.

Revisit your brand. Is the current domain name really the best? Focus more on building someone that will be popular & brandable outside of Google. Think about logos, colors, etc. Strong brands make it much easier to succeed in SEO. A good brand is more important than keyword stuffing but in a lucky & perfect world you can figure out a brand that involves your money keyword. That will help users figure out what you do & indirectly boosts a few SEO signals.

Become a cruel content evaluator. Most content out there especially old content sucks. Don't worry about word count, worry about providing value to users. Make the content look pretty. Ensure it provides original & valuable insights not already published on 100 other sites. Worry less about Google and worry more about is this content good enough it will make users want to come back. Engaging, slightly click baited titles with subtle keyword placement is good. Embedded relevant links that pulls users deeper into your site is great. Once you have great content, restart the content process and improve it even more. Owners of failing restaurants think their food is the best but the lack of repeat customers tells the real truth. If a website had amazing content, it would attract users from social sites, word of mouth, forums etc. The website would have so much non-Google traffic they wouldn't care about Google rankings. Boost the valuable content & present it in the best way possible. Do real usability testing. Make sure your mobile & desktop versions are tested. Ignore the compliments & focus on the weaknesses.

Once you finally nail down great content, start promoting it. Give it a little push on social sites, forums, build up a newsletter list, cross promote with other sites, etc. Users are very thirsty for actually useful & valuable sites. If users don't like your site you missed a step and need to go back and figure out where is the weak link.

Don't blame Google (yeah they suck but it won't help you). Focus on making your site successful outside of Google and Google will come crawling back like a jealous ex-boyfriend desperately trying everything to win back your attention.

[Mark_A]

Hi skaterpunk and goodroi, great posts, and thank you for giving me plenty of food for thought.

skaterpunk, I am not a youtube personality! but I do do sales & marketing :-) and lots of that is about how we do or do not come across on the net.

goodroi good advice about making sure to provide excellent user relevant content, I have found creating content has been limited by the structure of our current website and is often a compromise, this is something I plan to rectify if we make a new site. Yours is a very thoughtful post, thank you so much.

[lucy24]

If I had it to do over again, I would give my /includes/ directory a different name.

[Mark_A]

Does anyone do "printable pages" anymore? When I was doing websites (back a few years) I used the css no-print feature to slim a graphic page to just print elements - I set this in page templates so users could print any page and get a reasonable output in print. I think people rarely print web pages, still I like to have printable pages.

[tangor]

If you could start again, what would you do?

If the domain is not wrecked, I would NOT start over again, but I might rewrite it. Domains are hard to come by, particularly those that have previously ranked well, but have fallen off in RECENT MONTHS as g continues to fiddle with things on sectors of the web (not an update, but perhaps enforcement of an update that had not been done before, for PR purposes).

I would adopt aggressive bot mashing and referer (sic) spam and all other request oddities with 403s, monitor for a month or three, then do it again for what was missed, and three months later take another look at "where we are now".

g keeps changing the goal posts and we must change, too.

[Mark_A]

Hi tangor, sorry I must have said too much with that "start again" reference.

We have a business site, it does not do badly, we are considering a new website (same domain) and hope to be able to take a step forward with the new site. In that way we are starting again, but it will still feature the same company logo and company domain name.

[tangor]

If you are static, keep it that way. If you are a cms, keep it that way. Else g can get conflicting signals. You are talking like I commented:

REWRITE, roll it out in bits and pieces, and KEEP THE SAME PROFILE.

Or, as M$ often does, "It's and Update!". :)

[Mark_A]

All pages have a *.php extension at the moment. Some sections are CM enabled in a limited way.

[tangor]

Keep your current framework, just revamp the CONTENT as needed to get the the next level. IOW, don't change what you have for a full blown CMS like Wp, Drupal, etc ... that CHANGES your site config and g might reset you to ZERO.

[lucy24]

All pages have a *.php extension at the moment.

No harm there, unless you mean that all pages are called /something/index.php in which case you need to deal with it. It is trivial to rewrite this kind of thing--say, between .html and .php--so don’t get the idea you’ll need to change URLs if you ever go to something other than php. Besides, it’s fun to confuse robots by making it look as if you’ve got A when really it’s B.

I am probably in the minority here, but when I see an extensionless URL my immediate reaction is “get back in the server and put some clothes on!”

[Mark_A]

@lucy24

No harm there, unless you mean that all pages are called /something/index.php ..

When I made my first serious website, it was a frames site and every page was an index page :) "all index" sites we called them, didn't do too badly at the time but I wouldn't do it today.

[Mark_A]

@tangor

don't change what you have for a full blown CMS like Wp, Drupal, etc ... that CHANGES your site config and g might reset you to ZERO.

That might be an issue for us, because we are planning to give the new site a WP CMS .. because it will be so much easier for me and my colleagues to update and add content etc. At the moment every smallest change is a pain.

The current site does have some good positions in the SERPS which we don't want to lose, traffic wise they don't drive volumes of visitors but they are specialised so what visitors do come are valuable..

[Mark_A]

The current site has a mix of urls which might tell me something.

Static product pages are domain.co.uk/product1.php

While other pages are domain.co.uk/special-section/featured-item/

I have been told that if we go for a WP build urls will end in domain/section/page/

[not2easy]

In WP you tell your URLs how you want them to look, see this at WP: [wordpress.org...]

It is well worth your time to work it out in advance how you want your structure to appear because although it can be changed in the future with a few clicks, that is not something you want to build in from the start.

[Mark_A]

Thanks for that @not2easy :)

[Mark_A]

It looks increasingly like we will have to compromise with the new site, especially where urls are concerned.

This makes me wonder if we should just bite the bullet and move to ..domain/directory/filename.html - As opposed to either ..directory/filename.php or ..directory/