Know-How Exchange : SEO/SEM

If your focus is SEO, keep it on SEO. In over two years of working with clients on SEO, I've not had to "trash" any website yet.

However, there is always the issue of Flash. I have only once so far run into a client who used all Flash on the website. There is an SEO workaround for this, but it does require a good bit of reprogramming.

A client is likely to be very upset if you ask them to throw out a website that was not made SEO compliant. Like you said, they just made a huge investment. So look at the elements that you can edit, and work with those first. Just small edits here and there can go a long way to improving SEO compliance.

I've had several clients come to me who have talked to various SEO firms who told them to redo the entire site. I can tell you it's very upsetting to them. Try to work with the current site if you can.

You definitely should, however, suggest ways that they can "improve conversion from organic search", which does involve making design changes. The case I make is "What good does it do you to get lots of new organic traffic from high rankings if you aren't able to convert them?" It's important to consider that.

I just put a blog post up last week on my blog about ways you can A/B test pages for organic search to improve conversion. Testing pages and elements here and there might be an easier pill for them to swallow.

Here's the post: https://www.search-mojo.com/wordpress/?p=136

Good luck!

Janet Driscoll Miller
Search Mojo

I would either turn down the project or obtain a compromise between the Flash and the needs of search engines. Obviously you'll need to get creative with this site and you'll have to decide how "gray hat" you want to get with it.

Though, you'll get a better feel of my opinion on Flash if you read my blog post entitled "Is Flash for Fools?" on this page https://www.trinitysem.com/2007/11/20/flash-fools/

Last year I turned down a flash site project which was referred to me by a web designer who is an ongoing referral source for my firm.

My philosophy is that if I take on a client I have to make their best interest my priority. I could not do that in this case because it would have caused great embarrassment for my referral source. I felt an ethical need to extract myself.

I do believe that it is an SEO's job to minimize the impact on the client's site and budget and maximize the site's performance. If there is some creative, white hat, solution, then you should pursue it. Generally you can do a lot with the body area of the site without incurring much cost.

Any SEO ultimately should result in some site changes however. Even on sites that previously had SEO.

A compromise may be required as well. Creating a balance between Flash and the text is likely what will need to be done.

Side note: It irks me that large, authoritative sites get away with murder in regards to these matters. They do things that would destroy a typical site. What makes them survive and prosper is link momentum, scale, traffic from other media, etc, etc. They seem to be impervious, to some degree, to technical SEO concerns.

Some rambling notes which I hope are helpful.

Regards,

Greg Hill
Trinity Search Engine Marketing

Afterthought: I've seen blank pages rank well. So, in this case, the off-page factors may be where you need to spend most of your time.

Hi Double I,

Nice question, one that I deal with all the time and that could lead me into a rant, but here is just my 2 cents worth, right down the line:

II: It seems to me that, more often than not, in order to do a thorough job of SEO, the entire Web site must be substantially redesigned (polite way of saying "trashed" and "started over").

Is this an accurate statement?

PB: I like to say "blown up" but as much as this is true for 95% of the websites out there, it applies not just for the lack of SEO but the overall impact of impact and design that goes into them from an overall marketing standpoint such as calls-to-action (something, anything, that requires visitors to do something, anything)

Ready, Fire, Aim, instead of Ready, Aim, Fire seems to be the mantra when you let website developers loose without pulling in an Internet Marketing/SEO first and run a parallel design/development. Can't tell you how many businesses contact me, justifiable upset because they have just spent thousands on a website that they now realize has zero conversion potential and isn't ranking high in the SERPS that ask how we can "Save our Site".

But no, with regards to SEO there is always something that we can do to improve the organic rankings that doesn't involve an extreme makeover/blow up.

A badly developed site (full Flash home page, frames, javascript pull-down menus etc.) does present some definite limitations that I always point out in the proposal as they need to be explained with relation to "realistic expectations" and how fully it can ever be optimized.

II: I feel that the last few times when I was asked to give general feedback on a site's SEO, my comments would be, "This site is pretty, but it's worthless. You need to redo the whole thing and take SEO into better account. You need to rethink your navigation and the copy."

I might not be as direct as that, but that's what's in my head.

PB: Agree, far too many websites are horrible marketing tools (they might look "pretty" but they aren't going to sell products/services) regardless of how new or how much they cost to develop, but the last thing a prospect/wants to hear is "blow up" because they aren't going to do it anyway, so we have to work with what we have, on-page and help develop an off-page strategy and just make it clear that extreme optimization (full content, navgation etc.) is most likely not going to be possible.

But, the SEO efforts will be better than doing nothing.

II: It's almost as if there was little or no attention given to the copy or the overall SEO results when the site was designed and produced.

PB: Paul, it drives me nuts too because there wasn't any attention given to SEO, even SEO 101 like titles relevant to keywords. In some cases that I have seen I have told the client to ask for some money back or to have the SEO implementations we recommend implemented at no-charge by the development firm - and this has worked.

II: If this is often the case, do SEO professionals often suggest to redo a site in full? Or do they just try to make a bad situation better by doing what they can?

PB: The latter, as pretty much answered above, but again I point out the realistic expectations in the contract and in discussion.

II: I suppose in large part it has to do with budget, timing (how new the site is), and the emotional attachment to the site that the client has.

PB: Exactly, you hit this one right on.

We have one client in particular that just spent (gulp) $80,000 for what is arguably a very pretty site (heaps and heaps of Flash), but I don't think it's going to do much to generate leads. I'm apprehensive to tell the client that he just flushed $80,000 down the toilet.

PB: I would analyze it and see exactly what can optimized on-page without making major changes, and then see what does necessitate major changes that would involve re-writes and suggest to them that they talk to the development firm about implementing these changes at no extra charge.

II: Any feedback will be greatly appreciated.

PB: I hope my comments help!