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Wonderstore Developments Ltd
16 May 2006 16:01pm
I'd be really interested / grateful to hear anyone's comments & suggestions on an interesting situation we find ourselves in.
We have a client for whom we provide some web applications that extend his site.
That site was built by a web co who claim to do SEO too, and it's in need of a rebuild.
Now our client wants to move the whole thing to us, but the existing web/seo co have told him categorically that he will lose his rankings "because of the way they've done it", but they won't explain exactly what they've done...
Clearly, there's little, if any, visible optimisation on the site itself (in fact it breaks almost every common-sense rule there is), but it is ranked very well for its keywords. A little investigation turns up an awesome set of very high quality inbound links that our client has got setup over the years from in-house marketing efforts - which suggests that's where the score is coming from (a second site, also seo'd by the same co with this client that has no inbound links has no visible ranking).
Pro-active SEO isn't something that we do, other than anything on the site itself. I can't really tell the client he's working with a bunch of cowboys, for one I suppose they might be some kind of miracle workers...
What would be the things that you might look at in relation to his site if this were your client that could shed some light on the realism of the "threat" by the SEO co?
Thanks in advance for your time.
Director at Juretic Media
16 May 2006 16:33pm
Sounds like they are cowboys. I'd get an SEO expert to do a quick appraisal of the site.
The rebuild should improve the sites ranking if done correctly . If the content is going to stay the same there should be no problem.
I'd be happuy to give the site a once over
On 16:01:50 16 May 2006 Christopher A.Wright wrote:
Managing Director at Bloom Media (UK) Ltd
17 May 2006 08:14am
Hi there,
If as you suggest the rankings are mainly due to the number and quality of inbound links then the launch of a new search engine friendly site shoud actually improve their positions.
You need to work out where the links are pointing to, if they are all to the main domain then you should have no problems, however if they are deep linked into inner pages then you need to ensure that you loook at these pages and in the new site post equally relevant content on pages that reatian those URL's.
There may be some fluctuation of rankings whilst the new site is indexed, but through the use of 301 redirects on the old URL's to either the new corresponding URL for that content or the home page this impact can be minimised and shouldn't last more than a month or two.
Its hard to be any more specific without being able to look at the site you are asking about, it may be that there are other factors and that for some reason the SEO company are right, if you would like us to take a closer look then you can contact us via our website www.jumphigher.co.uk or contact me via this posting.
Good luck.
On 16:01:50 16 May 2006 Christopher A.Wright wrote:
Chairman at Mapa Research
17 May 2006 09:19am
I f the client wants to move and they are trying to frighten him into staying ( which is what they are doing ) then how can he trust them to work in his best interest from now on? And what does it say about their approach to his interests to date? Not a lot.
If he moves and the site visibility goes down then you will work to put it right and get them back up there and perhaps even get higher? And he trusts you.
Questions do they have control over the links? Are they saying they will break the links if he moves?
If so; what price for the client to have a bad website with good links? My personal experience is that if the website design is improved and made moer user friendly it can increase revenues by between 30-50 % over any previous experience.
Lower traffic but more conversions is probably a no loss risk from his move.
Go for it.
M
owner at black and white marketing
17 May 2006 13:55pm
I stand right with everyone else who suggests that these guys are a bad business to be doing business with.
The ONLY was that they could lose ranking is by doing something dodgy to get the rankings today ... my company is currently offering sample free seo reports, just go to http://blackwhite.uk.com click on the banner, fill in the form and we will see how bad the situation actually is.
I would also get your client to find out where their traffic is coming from, they might be coming from spoof domains, but it would be interesting to see if thats how they are generating the godo ranking!