Category: Web Design

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When Should You Update Your Website?

I’ve just this week done reviews for several clients about why their organic placement is slipping or is non-existent. There has been a common thread to each of these clients. The code on their site is bad, in some cases really bad. What exactly do I mean?

In some cases a site is so old or has so many problems that a redesign may actually be cheaper than a rework of the code to try to bring a website better performance. Here are several specifics to consider:

  1. Is your website built from a host’s template? Guess what, it may be pretty but contains code that slows page load time (which Google considers and weighs now for organic placement). Additionally there are missed opportunities to build in SEO tactics as you even name elements when you use a template.
  2. Is your site built with FrontPage and you are pasting in content from Word? Did you know that many of these WSIWYG that is What You See Is What You Get editors (not Dreamweaver fortunately) add all kinds of depreciated tags or span and style tags to the actual paragraph itself. This makes a page so very code heavy, slows speed, and makes it very hard for a webmaster to update. If you don’t update a site in FrontPage where it has been created and is how it is managed your can really mess up the webmasters syncing protocol and potentially lock them out from doing further updates. In fact, even worse is that FrontPage has been depreciated by Microsoft and so not even used by most professional webmasters. When I see code that FrontPage has created I know that the site may have been built in 2005  or about that time which is really pretty old technology.
  3. When you consider what it costs to have someone like me review and upgrade the code, rework the content to use SEO tactics on an old site or a template-driven site, a new design may actually be more cost efficient. It is simply not a good idea to spend $2,500 to $3,000 to rework a very old website, or one that is controlled by a template where certain aspects simply cannot be changed.

For sites such as this where the site owner may not have the money for a redesign, there is still hope. There are inbound marketing approaches that can be done in the meantime to help build link activity, and content creation updates that can help a site until there is the budget for a full redesign. Sometimes even just the rework of the home page can put a bandaid temporarily on the problem until there is more money available for a redesign and upgrade.

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Don’t Get Locked Out of Your Own Online Business

I see this all the time, it is not uncommon at all. A business person buys an existing business, several months or years down the road they want to solve problems with organic placement and find out that they have no access to the important tools that control their online presence.

For any business owner considering buying an existing business, these are the things you should demand before the final payment for your new business changes hands. Then verify that they have been done before you sign over the last check.

  1. Domain name registration should be transferred to you.
  2. You should have the admin URL, login, and password for your domain control panel. Verify this! Make sure that if you needed to change your domain name servers you have access to do so. This allows you to change web hosts when you want without hassle.
  3. Your web hosting should be in your name and you should have administrative rights to the account and know how to login so you can set up new email accounts, and change passwords to lock old owners out.
  4. You should be an administrator on your business’ Google AdWords account. If the old business owner used his email address to set up the account, he or she needs to relinquish this email account to you or have Google AdWords change it to yours before you make your last payment to them. Don’t be satisfied with anything less than administrative rights.
  5. You should be an administrator on your Google Analytics account. Once you are an administrator, you can remove all old business owners and account managers from accessing your Google Analytics account. Don’t be satisfied with anything but administrative privileges. If the original business owner cannot do this for some reason, ask to be made a standard user so you can see the traffic, but demand that before you exchange final payment that a new Google Analytics account be set up with you as administrator and the new Google Analytics tracking code be installed on the website at their expense. This will allow you access to the old stats but full control moving forward. Demand that the old account remain in place for a minimum of two years.

You will never have more leverage to get what you want than before you make your final payment or before you pen your final signature to a contract. I have seen a number of instances when new owners simply did not know to make these changes and we have had to re-mediate them at expense to the new business owner. Be smart, be careful, and make sure you are not locked out of some of the most important tools to grow your new business. You should be in control not the old owner or an old account manager.

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Five Years Ago I Had Great Organic Placement

I have had a rash of prospects tell me that their organic placement has dropped so much after they paid a ton of money for a new website that they want to repost the website they had five years ago to get their old traffic and Google.com placement back. Sorry, but there is no time machine that will take us back to the time you placed highly on Google.com.

A website is not a brochure; you create it once and then hand it out for years. It is a work of art, a puzzle, a tool, a selling machine. It needs care and it needs content updates. What worked three years ago and five years ago certainly does not work now. Even if we could reload a website that performed well five years ago on Google, it would most likely not perform in the same place today.

The Web has changed dramatically in the time that I have been providing professional services and it has significantly changed in the past three years and seriously changed even this past year. What is important for website owners to understand is that now the content is crucial for organic placement, but more than that, it cannot just stop at great content.

A well placed website (in the organic search results) needs:

  1. great content that provides features and benefits
  2. content that is informational beyond what you sell and service
  3. regular updates of interesting articles, white papers, and informational updates
  4. social networking work off site on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+
  5. a blog that is updated a minimum of three times a week and  deep links to pages in your website

That in a nutshell is a web authority site! A website that is beyond a brochure but provides real help and information for readers not only on services and products that are sold but on topics and ideas. This is no five page website that’s for sure.

It takes time and money to build and maintain a web authority site, but the rewards can be big. With a site that is well placed organically, you may not need to spend quite so much in advertising to get traffic to your site. The older your authority site is, the more links you will naturally earn which will continue to improve your placement as well. Additionally, the depth of information you have on your website will let prospects know you know your business and are the go-to person for their needs.

What used to work five years ago for organic placement certainly will not work now, but quality content and information-rich web pages will never go out of style. I invite you to visit our “authority website” and see if we can help you too.

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See Your Website Through the Eyes of the iPad

With the popularity of iPads and tablets, it is important to take a moment and view your website the way an iPad would see it. I’ve found this free online tool that allows you to do just that; see your site like an iPad sees it.

http://ipadpeek.com/

If you watch your Google Analytics statistics you will see that Google is now reporting iPad and tablets users in the statistics.

Of interest to me recently was that screen sizes were growing and now with the advent of iPads and tablets, they are shrinking again. A good size for a design is about 1100 pixels wide or so as this looks good on tablets and on most computer screens.