Site Migration and SEO: Go Forward without Going Back

Transcription

1 Site Migration and SEO: Go Forward without Going Back Check out our free white papers and research at while you are waiting for the webinar to start

2 Your Presenter Erik Newton Sr. Director Marketing Demand Generation, BrightEdge Prior jobs: Looxcie, TiVo, Netflix, Adobe, MP3.com, Dentsu Founder of Silicon Valley Search Engine Roundtable (SVSER) of large advertisers BrightEdge s 3 rd customer at Netflix

3 About BrightEdge Our goal: keeping you ahead of the 500+ Google algo changes a year Present Last Year Social Signals 3 Years Ago Secure Search Content Performance Marketing

4 Some Why Starting Points on SEO and Site Redesign 1. Driven by messaging & branding objectives, leadership changes 2. Usually not for pure business reasons 3. Technical performance updates Site redesigns are almost never driven by SEO goals, even though SEO supports 30-50% of traffic and conversion at most sites

5 Site Migration Includes: major site migrations, site redesigns, IA changes and site reskins Opportunity for SEO improvement and SEO failure Site migration SEO objective: Do no harm!

6 1. Baseline Your SEO Position and Assets Search engine rank on top keywords In US and other English-speaking countries Organic Traffic Volume % of traffic, % of conversions Pages that receive traffic from search engines Pages with backlinks Total backlinks By Device and Technical Document results for desktop and mobile Page load time of home page and top-level pages

7 2. Determine the New Site Map Menus Top-level pages Second and third-level pages Decide if any urls will change Map all old pages to new pages, even if not a direct match Involve and SEO

8 3. Create or Replicate SEO d Pages Have an SEO: Advise on content of top 100 pages that receive traffic from search engines Write unique title tags, meta-description tags, and H1s for top 100 pages Deploy anchor text and internal links Plan for appropriate schedule interval, 100 pages takes about hours of SEO work

9 Favor Short, Focused Pages Over Long Diverse ones 1. Reduce topical clutter 2. Make shorter, more focused pages 3. Increase text 4. Use images as a complement 5. Diversify, proliferate 6. Tall to wide Do unique SEO work for all pages

10 4. Top Ten Technical Migration Tasks 1. Audit the backlinks 2. Audit the crawlability 3. Audit for orphan pages from prior IAs 4. Use 301 redirects to maintain link equity 5. Use canonical tags to handle duplicate content 6. Overhaul image tags and image names 7. Implement HTTPS on all or most pages 8. Update the site map with updated page priority weights 9. Recheck robots.txt so new pages are crawlable 10.Test page speed

11 5. Track SEO Rank and Traffic Updated site will take a week to reindex Watch for messages and penalties in GWT Expect a dip in rank and traffic If you have done well rank and traffic should improve from before Do you have the same or more exposure and traffic potential?

12 Common SEO Pitfalls and Mistakes in Site Redesign 1. Not knowing which original pages have most organic traffic value 2. Not knowing which topics have most organic value 3. Changing url or directory structure without proper redirects 4. Eliminating pages that had rank and backlinks with no 301

13 Google Webmaster Tools for Crawl Errors

14 Google Webmaster Tools for Robots.txt Testing

15 Google Webmaster Tools for Page Load Speed

16 BrightEdge Data Cube Aggregate Score & Actions List

17 Sample BrightEdge Site Audit & Recommendations Baseline Recommendations

18 BrightEdge Keyword and Landing Page Report Keyword Ranked pages

19 BrightEdge Page Traffic Report Page traffic

20 BrightEdge Backlink, Anchor Text, and Page Report Referrer Anchor text Page

21 Summary 1. Involve your SEO early 2. Audit and define the baseline 3. Identify organic assets 4. Do no harm to assets in move 5. Update and diversify the on-page SEO 6. Redirect as needed 7. Use tools and platforms to make sure you are improving BrightEdge can help. For a more in-depth conversation:

22 Questions? Don t be shy, this stuff is confusing. 1. Ask a question on the GoTo Webinar toolbar in text box 2. Or use hand icon and I will open the mic and you can ask live Connect with me on LinkedIn Thanks for joining the webinar. We plan to do new search topics regularly. Future topics will include: Multi-Channel Attribution, Salesforce Reporting for Marketing, Local SEO, SEO and Site Migration And, registration for the BrightEdge Share15 conference will open in about a month