This is an example of a website that has fallen foul of Google’s algorithm changes that punishes website that have not much content (thin content). Despite our warnings they decided previously to delete most of their content, here is the resulting confusion / work / effort / setbacks from that decision that has probably put the business back 2 years.
[Website Manager] I don’t think we’ve spoke before but I have now taken over the role of Manager of our operation and website. My key role will to improve sales and raise local knowledge of our existence. I have previously spoken to the owner about difficulties potential customers have had finding our website. There will obviously be some work required on our SEO but I also want to find out what content exists in our metadata.
Is there a reason why we have never been given admin rights to our website so we can make any necessary amendments? Can you provide me admin rights? Would be happy to pop round and discuss what can be done to improve the website.
[Web Designers] Hi the project to update and promote the site was in the hands of your predecessor previously and he made some very drastic changes that I advised against but glad now that you are in contact and wanting to readdress the SEO.
[Website Manager] Are you available this week for a meeting to go through the SEO? I can do either morning or afternoon. You mention that we had made some very drastic changes which you advised against. Can you expand on this? I am particularly interested in the metadata which effects the primary website and would hope we have not done anything which would have had an impact on this. When you search for our primary search terms we are nowhere to be seen.
[Web Designers] Happy to go over the changes previously insisted upon, I just checked my emails and notes with our meeting and advice and change requests from the last ‘tranche’ there was 27 emails exchanged and 2 longish phone calls so you can imagine the time and effort I have invested in the site already to make it work but the general idea from the previous manager from last time was to remove most the page’s content and remove 3-4 pages before adding more content that he gave us over the weeks.
Nice chatting today, hope we can go forward and improve your website SEO with you.
Notes:
1 Website stats the email account you have gives you dynamic access to website stats
2 News section – Here is the news section / blog info you need
Hopefully its quite straight forward to post your info but here are some Instructions on how to write your first post:
3 SEO recommendations I will give a list of proposals to improve the site (see below)
4 Requests – Need to rank higher for Thurrock / Essex search terms regarding your services
Urgently you need to create a facebook page. I have made a few technical seo changes on the site already on the back of our conversation, here are some recommendations that you can do but we can also do these as part of a SEO program.
I re-reviewed the strong advice I gave to not remove pages or content and am confident we gave the best advice, the changes were for the archive website and mainly for pages being removed and content being removed.
I can go over the site’s performance and my recommendations during our meeting, Friday Afternoon would be preferable for me, 2pm? can you come to my location / office in Stanford-le-Hope? I am busy until next Wednesday so suggest we chat then, the news sections are under the CMS system and access has previously been given and can go through the site, it’s updates, CMS and SEO next week
[Website Mananger] Our Director decided to place the SEO project with yourself after the great advice you have given us. There was strong competition from the the same company that provides the service for the other company websites. Despite this I still need to work with them to ensure the website is maintained to a standard that meets the needs of the business.
Since our meeting in August I have been tied up with other projects although however my focus is now entirely centred on improving our exposure on the web.
You have already provided me with a list of suggestions that will enable me to achieve this, however I have come across a few problems that need to be resolved.
- When completing the contact questionnaire this doesn’t appear to go to anyone’s email address We are losing enquiries. I need this set up so all enquiries are sent to myself
- When searching for our services in Thurrock on Google our news thread relating to our participation in the Thurrock area is showing. I did not want this and so removed the thread from the website. However there is no longer a link to our website. How do we stop this showing in the search engine. No one will click on the link for a news thread relating to business activity dating 2011?
- The Marketing team that will be checking the website’s SEO have asked for access to the Property section on the google analytics, permissions are currently set for viewing. They said we need to get this through. Is this something you set up or can change the settings to?
I look forward to your response in due course
[Web Designers] Ref the email accounts, if you didnt know you control all the email accounts (this was taken over by yourselves quite some time ago). You also previously transferred the site to your own servers and it wasn’t until I spotted that the site was not online that I alerted you to this mistake and instructed yourselves how to get the site online again that it was eventually put back.
As for the contact form, this hasn’t been changed or a concern previously I can only guess that when the email accounts were re-created and re-setup that the info@ wasn’t setup correctly or given to anyone?
The contact for currently sends to the info@ and as you can see from the website this is the main email address
I think this is the most logical / standard email account to use and this should be utilised as I am sure it must be setup already, if this isn’t the case then please get back to me but even if you haven’t got info@ access then your guys can setup a redirect from info@ to your own individual account.
Regarding removing the news section page, removing anything that is indexed in Google is generally a bad move for the website / SEO but I can request that Google Re-indexes the site now which should remove that link.
[Website Manager] I have now established why we have not received any emails from the info@ address. A few months ago our IT chap moved our email from our server to office 365 and this address was not transferred across. This has now been rectified and one IT chap is now looking for new position. It was myself that removed the news article. As you suggest that this is a bad thing, can I not simply restore the article? It currently sits in the trash box. Ultimately when people are searching for our services in Essex want them to see a link to our home page, not an article regarding a dated local community project which incidentally nobody bothered turning up to! I guess this ultimately comes down to our SEO and content of the Website etc.
[Web Designers] Deleting content / pages is never the best idea for website visitors / SEO but I appreciate it can be frustrating when Google doesn’t reward you with positions for search phrases you think you deserve to be ranked highly for but confirm after a bit of tweaking over the weekend you are ranked for your service and Essex and also ranked for your service and Thurrock. This poor ranking and poor visitor numbers are down to a variety of factors and have been personally frustrated by the actions requested on the websites previously that has potentially been responsible for the loss of visitors to both the websites (down 23% and down 48% on website visitors compared with the same period 12 months ago)
I think you should re-instate that post and add relevant text to it, then continue to add content (news posts text and photos) to give the website the best chance to improve visitor numbers / rankings.
[Website Manager] Keeping the SEO aside, you have the registration and hosting of the website and are and will continue to be my point of contact regarding the site development, what arrangements are or were in place regarding you providing your services. Forgive my ignorance but is there some form of maintenance contract or fixed fee for your services?