How To Commit SEO Suicide

Pop quiz: What is the easiest and quickest way to destroy your search engine rankings?

Answer: Rebuild your website from scratch!

I see this a lot. People get bored with their website and feel the need to revamp it. They're bored of it because they see it so often, but their customers, who see it much less frequently, think their website is great!

The consequences are also quite severe. When you rebuild your website from scratch with an entirely different software platform, all the incoming links to your product pages and other content break. Your links are your life in search. Lose them and you can kiss your rankings goodbye.

Also, Google likes old websites. When you scrap a website, all your old content will get removed from Google's index and the new stuff may take a long time to be readded. The older the better.

The best way to keep your website fresh is to let it evolve. Make sure you have a structure that lets you add content regularly - news items and photos for example. Experiment with small changes and improvements and keep those that work and discard those that didn't.

Try stuff.

If you want to change the look of your website you can do that. Just don't scrap the whole lot because you feel the need to scratch an itch. It's like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

About Roger Keays