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walmart
06-24-2015, 09:49 PM
My website was built by me many years ago and I did not know much html. I know it needs updating, but I am so worried I will loose my #3 rank in google. What should I do? It has been at #2 and #3 for keywords for 10 years and do not want to loose my spot. Thanks for any help.

Harold Mansfield
06-24-2015, 10:04 PM
My website was built by me many years ago and I did not know much html. I know it needs updating, but I am so worried I will loose my #3 rank in google. What should I do? It has been at #2 and #3 for keywords for 10 years and do not want to loose my spot. Thanks for any help.

You're going to loose it anyway. May as well take the hit now in the course of getting up to today's standards, rather than waiting till you're loosing position and have to scramble.

It's great that it has position for certain keywords, but how much traffic does it get?
Does it do anything besides rank?
What's the bounce rate?
Is anyone actually reading it?
Does it bring leads?
Does it make any money?

Seems to me this is a good time to improve. You may find that improvements will be very beneficial in the long run.

walmart
06-24-2015, 10:37 PM
I would think if it ranks high in google then that is all the traffic I can expect? What would make the traffic change? Yes it makes money, and I get about 70-100 unique a day. Is that good?

Harold Mansfield
06-24-2015, 11:02 PM
I would think if it ranks high in google then that is all the traffic I can expect? What would make the traffic change? Yes it makes money, and I get about 70-100 unique a day. Is that good?

I can't tell you if that's good or not. I have no idea what your goals are or what it's supposed to do. But it's clear that you are a little behind on your knowledge. Search traffic is important for many websites, but these days it's a smaller portion of overall traffic than it was in 2005.

I always say if you're satisfied with what it's doing and don't think there's any room for improvement, then don't do anything.

turboguy
06-24-2015, 11:13 PM
We are both in the same boat Walmart. I actually posted a very similar question here a few weeks ago. I actually have about 8 web sites and the main one was one I did in FrontPage 2002 which means I probably set it up around 2002. Some of the newer sites I have were done in DreamWeaver.

Your traffic is good. My sites vary a lot. My main business is seasonal so in the off season I may get 30 visitors a day and in peak season I may get 250-300 a day. Over the course of a year it probably averages about the same as yours. There are two main search terms people would use to search for what I have and in one I come out number 2 and in the other come out number 3.

I also have sites with very little traffic. One gets 3-5 visitors a day in peak season but my conversion rate is good. About 75% of those visitors call me for a quote and I could not handle more of that business. As far as that slow site goes in a search for that service in any city within 50 miles it comes out # 1, 3, 4, and 7 with number 5 being another of my sites that would send someone there. So anyway we are both facing the same decision.

In my case although my site still looks pretty modern I know that more and more people are using mobile devices and that Google is starting to rate mobile friendly sites higher than those that are not, particularly for searches using mobile phones. Being mobile friendly is going to be more and more important. Coming out high on search engines now does not mean you will still do that in a few months or a few years. I have decided to redo my main site as well as a few of my other sites.

I took a quick peek at your web site. There are a lot of important things in a web site. One is coming out high enough in search engines that you get traffic and another is converting the people who visit your web site into customers. To be honest. With the URL you have I don't think updating your web site will lower the way you come out in search engines. I think you do a terrific job of conveying your message on your site. I will give you an A+ for message. Another important factor is delivery. To be honest your site looks old and tired. I think if you keep your message very similar but have a mobile friendly graphically attractive site you could even go up in the search engines. I also think your conversion rate, the percentage of people who visit your site and become a customer could improve dramatically. I am going to post this and then start over with more info.

turboguy
06-24-2015, 11:37 PM
Ok, nowI want to talk about options you have and I am going to give you a pretty wide range.

1. Since it is a profitable site you could hire someone to do it for you. My guess is you could get a good person (there are lots of good ones here) without breaking the bank.

2. I will throw out this option but I would not totally recommend it. You could go to fiverr.com and find someone in India to do a site for you in Wordpress for under 50 bucks.

3. There are a lot of site builder tools on the various hosting platforms. Wix is one that seems to be good. Weebly is another but I don't think it is quite as good. GoDaddy has one and most larger hosting companies have one. I will say I have no first hand experience with any of these.

4. This is the route I am taking. There is a free program called WordPress. Something like 25% of the web sites on the internet today are created using WordPress. It is something based on CMS which means Customer Management System. It is handy to know a little HTML and CMS but not really necessary. Installing it with most hosts is clicking one button and there are hundreds or thousands of free templates to base your site on. Some are prepackaged with Wordpress and others are easy to install. It is pretty easy to create a site using WordPress. There are dozens of tutorials on YouTube showing how to make a site using WordPress. Check out the tutorials and see what you think. I have been playing with WordPress for a while but still have a ways to go (a long ways). My suggestion to someone new to wordpress would be to find a tutorial that you like and then use the same template they use in the tutorial. I am using a different one and the control panel and things I need to do with my template are very different from the tutorials I have watched.

turboguy
06-24-2015, 11:41 PM
I forgot to say that there are actually two different versions of wordpress. One is at WordPress › Blog Tool, Publishing Platform, and CMS (http://www.wordpress.org) and the other at the same but .com. You want the one at .org and not the one at .com.

Here is a link to some of the free templates so you can check them out. https://wordpress.org/themes/

walmart
06-25-2015, 12:11 AM
Wow weeeee Turboguy...Thanks you for all the information. I really appreciate the time you took to help me. Your probably right, with my URL I sometimes even rank above Wal-Mart's own site for keywords. I really had no idea most sites get that little of traffic. I thought I was on the very low end. Thank you so much!!!

walmart
06-25-2015, 12:18 AM
Herald, Not at all, I am always up for improvement. I always heard if I mess with my site you will loose your rank and go into the sandbox. So I really don't touch anything other then thru my ftp. Yes I am behind in SEO for sure.

vangogh
06-25-2015, 01:36 AM
You don't have to lose traffic at all to redesign your site. As long as the content on the page stays the same and you keep the same URL, changing will make no difference to search engines. They strip most of that stuff away before ranking pages. Making any change can have an effect, but as long as the URL stays the same and the content stays the same, I don't think your traffic will change much.

A few years ago I decided to change the name of my business, which meant a new design and new URLs and new lots of things that I thought might hurt my traffic. I think I was getting about 1,000 visitors a day. Regardless of what would happen with search traffic I thought it was the right thing for my business. The content stayed the same and I used redirection to let search engines know that what used to be at one URL was now at another.

I might have seen a slight dip in traffic for a month while search engines figured out what happened. I'm pretty sure they can do it quicker now. After the small dip traffic increased at a faster rate than it had been.

When you make changes to a website it can certainly affect your search traffic, but it doesn't have to and if all you're going to change is the look of the site, you shouldn't see any significant change in search traffic.

Having said that depending on search traffic for you business is not a good idea. You should see search engines as a good source of traffic, but they shouldn't be all your traffic. They can change their algorithm at any time and you could lose all your traffic without doing anything wrong. You want other sources of traffic to go with search.

Harold Mansfield
06-25-2015, 09:04 AM
I just wanted to jump in and say that CMS stands for Content Management System, not Customer Management System.
I think you got it confused with CRM which is Customer Relationship Management.

May sound like nit picking, but it's a pretty important distinction when you're out there on Google searching for information.

turboguy
06-25-2015, 09:22 AM
Wow weeeee Turboguy...Thanks you for all the information. I really appreciate the time you took to help me. Your probably right, with my URL I sometimes even rank above Wal-Mart's own site for keywords. I really had no idea most sites get that little of traffic. I thought I was on the very low end. Thank you so much!!!

Well I am sure the amount of traffic depends on the interest there is in the topic the web site covers. If your URL was taylor swift dot com you would probably get 10,000 hits a day or more and if it were about something no once cares about getting a visitor might be an event to celebrate.

I only spent about a minute on your site and 30 seconds looking at your source code. Of course that is a bit more than what a visitor spends unless they find something that grabs their attention.

I am far from an expert on SEO but do manage to get my sites to come out high in a search. I usually don't like long url's with hyphens but I do think yours is excellent and a big part of why you come out high in searches. Your title and description are also decent and I think they are important. Where I think you hit a home run is your content.
My impression reading a bit of the text on your home page is that you come off as both honest and helpful and someone I would trust if I had something that I wanted to sell to WalMart. It has a nice homey comfortable feeling. I think you should convert a high percentage of your visitors who really do have a product they want to sell to Walmart.

From a graphical standpoint my first seconds on your site it really did look like something really out of date. I do think you badly need an upgrade. I agree with Vangogh. If the URL, the meta tags and the content stay the same it will not negatively affect your search rankings and down the road as google puts more emphasis on responsive, mobile friendly sites you will rank higher. (Responsive, mobile friendly sites will resize to fit the screen of the viewer for example someone if someone is visiting your site on a mobile phone the text and photos will resize to fit their screen saving them the bother of scrolling swiping.) Another thing with a CMS program like WordPress is you won't have to FTP changes to your site any more. Changes are made in a control panel and you just change what you want and it is much easier.

If you do decide to redo your site make sure it is responsive. In your case I would also suggest keeping it fairly simple. I think you come off well in your message and too much glitz might take away from that.

I am playing around with my first WordPress site myself right now and did the opposite of what I recommended for you. I went with a premium theme that has all kinds of glitz. It has things like multi level menus and below the slider are things that fly in and or across from all different directions. I will probably make my visitors dizzy if they stay that long. It is a site that I don't care about one way or the other and I look at it as my "learning experience". Actually I had thought about just closing that site down.

walmart
06-25-2015, 09:41 AM
I have a free site builder with my hosting plan. Crossing my fingers and might take the jump.

turboguy
06-25-2015, 10:59 AM
I just wanted to jump in and say that CMS stands for Content Management System, not Customer Management System.
I think you got it confused with CRM which is Customer Relationship Management.

May sound like nit picking, but it's a pretty important distinction when you're out there on Google searching for information.

Yes, I did know that and just had so many thoughts running through my mind that I wasn't paying attention. Thank you for the correction.

I find it interesting that there are so many acronyms in the business world today. For someone like me who has been in business for a few million years when there were few keeping them all straight can be a pain.

turboguy
06-25-2015, 11:03 AM
I have a free site builder with my hosting plan. Crossing my fingers and might take the jump.

Cindy, I think with the current situation with Google it is important that a web site is responsive (mobile friendly). I would suggest that if you are going to do an upgrade that you make sure the site you create using the free site builder is "responsive".

I do think once you get it done you will be glad you made the upgrade.

Harold Mansfield
06-25-2015, 11:32 AM
I find it interesting that there are so many acronyms in the business world today. For someone like me who has been in business for a few million years when there were few keeping them all straight can be a pain.

Don't feel bad. It's a pain for all of us. Sometimes even I get burned out from all of the acronyms, and buzzwords.

Business Attorney
06-25-2015, 12:43 PM
Cindy, one thing I would caution you about is to keep a close eye on your results, particularly your conversion rate. Large companies run A-B tests constantly because even the smallest changes to a website can have a big impact. You may well find that the out-of-date appearance of your website, with its lack of graphics and formatting, actually attracts business better than a spiffy looking modern design. If that turns out to be the case, don't hesitate to go back to what works.

Keep in mind that your ultimate goal is to attract business, not to attract compliments on your website.

turboguy
06-25-2015, 10:25 PM
Cindy, one thing you might think about doing would be to set up your new site in a sub directory. Once it is complete and ready to go live move your existing site the another sub directory and the new site to the main directory. That does a few things. One is that your existing site stays active until the new site is totally finished and tested. The other is if down the road you regret the change you can change back to the old site very quickly and easily.

InnovationCubed
06-26-2015, 07:29 AM
There are techniques that could used for helping the search engines find your new url structure. An experienced web developer could advise you on how your new web site could gracefully handle old web site requests.

Kumar Palani
07-03-2015, 07:36 AM
My website was built by me many years ago and I did not know much html. I know it needs updating, but I am so worried I will loose my #3 rank in google. What should I do? It has been at #2 and #3 for keywords for 10 years and do not want to loose my spot. Thanks for any help.

To me user experience is much more important than SEO, for you can find alternatives for SEO (as a promotional strategy), and yet your website will stay as the ultimate playground when it comes to sales (leads, and so on). I think it would be a better idea to ensure your website stays up-to-date to provide improve user experience. Google PR is not as important as it once used to be, so you can ignore it.

Regarding SEO results (SERP) you will most likely see some increase in traffic and SERP rather than drop, provided you updated your website perfectly and ensure a good site structure.

SEO works by trail and error, there is no SEO strategy that is always perfect or all weather proof, so it would be quite normal for you update your website and adapt according to the results. I still believe it will be better than ever before. All the Best..!

HostColor
07-03-2015, 08:45 AM
Cindy,

If you have kept your rank in Google SERP on certain keywords and phrases, it means that the SE algorithm "likes" your website. The most important thing you must do is to grow your visitors from other sources and not to rely on Google itself. Adding new content also helps a lot. Updates mean that your website is not a dead publication and is still important to any specific audience. On the back end all you need to do is to make sure that the website is compatible with the W3C standards. So increasing the number of targeted visitors, adding new content and making sure that the website is WC3 compatible are the three I things you'd do anything might help or might damage your SERP rank.

dewalds86
09-29-2015, 05:49 AM
I would think if it ranks high in google then that is all the traffic I can expect? What would make the traffic change? Yes it makes money, and I get about 70-100 unique a day. Is that good?

All you really need to do with this site is to up date the look and feel. You can use the same content, the same meta data (meta title, meta descritption ect) just presented in a way that is more eye pleasing. You can also keep the current url structure.

We call this a site revamp. If you updtae the look and feel and keep the meta data, content and url structure then you shouldnt loose any rankings in serp.

The only way you will loose your rankings is if you change the urls, the meta titles, meta descriptions and the content on each page.

This site can easily be converted to a nice looking responsive Wordpress theme.

The one big positive thing this site has is authority because its been there along time.

janefirst
10-05-2015, 06:56 AM
You could develop it in bootstrap which would provide your a responsive web design and it can be easily accessible by mobile phones. Now Business is very much depend on mobile phones. You could hire a web programmer who can rebuild your site. Keep in mind to tell him to set the urls and its content as such. Your programmer could also make a new responsive design or alter the old CSS to make it responsive. Colors, and look of it can be changed through html or css files. Use @media in CSS to make it responsive.

walmartsupplier
03-16-2016, 11:39 AM
Thanks everyone for the help! I did update and now wish I would of done it long ago!

Btw.. I did not drop in rank and my traffic more then doubled.Thanks again!

Daniel160
04-22-2016, 03:45 PM
Really same situation here, I was running an old site with 8 years high ranking on Google, but actually the codes was old and many people suggested me update this website, but I really worry if we change it , the ranking will down, really big trouble now, I am planning to make a new mobile-friendly site in the coming days.

marketingwriter
04-24-2016, 10:36 AM
Hi WalMart,

I didn't check out your site but here's the first thing I would do: prospects can look paste old and weak design IF there is a compelling message that resonates with them. So...what I suggest is that you start getting headed in the right direction by taking care of these two key action items. 1. Get clear on who your ideal customer is. Why? Because once you have that understanding you will know what problems they are facing. Yes, they to sell products to WalMart but you need to go deeper than that to UNDERSTAND their feelings. eg. are they intimidated? do they lack confidence? do they know how to sell? Once you have this understanding you can look after the second most important action ite: 2. Crafting a compelling message. Your message is critical in establishing YOU as the best choice for help getting into WalMart. How do you do it? By using a compelling headline that catches the attention of your prospect. If you can't get your prospect's attention immediately, you're dead. Won't matter what your site looks like.Don't get me wrong...design is very important but I'm trying to help you without compromising your Google standing. So, here's a headline idea...A Step-By-Step Action Plan For Your Product Into WalMart - That Completely Eliminates The Feeling of Intimidation. Then, your copy would start off something like..."No one knows better than you how daunting it is to get your product to market. Especially when you're trying to figure out how to get it on a shelf at WalMart. That's if you even have the confidence to call them up in the first place. Trying to break through the buyer's maze at America's largest retailer isn't for the faint of heart. Unless- you have a plan. That's where we can help. Just like we have for thousands of people that had a great product and didn't know how to bring it to market. Hi, I'm Barb The WalMart expert...etc etc hope this helps...