Investing in SEO on your website is like putting money into a savings account and waiting for a return. It takes time to see gains from a savings account… the same goes with SEO. The longer something is live on the internet, the more chances it has to rank. That’s why your blog posts from 2 years ago may get a lot more traffic than the ones you posted last week.
Key Takeaways
- Changing the URL, page title, SEO title, and/or meta description on a page will cause it to lose some or all of its traffic from the search.
- Rewriting all of the content on a page will cause it to lose all or most of its traffic from search results.
- Rebuilding a website can cause you to start over if it is not done correctly.
- Updating your address on Google Business can hurt your calls for at least 6 months or more.
- There are specific things you can do to minimize traffic losses.
- Losing search traffic will reduce the number of calls and form submissions you get on your site.
However, you have to protect your investment for it to return. Here are 6 surefire ways that if your SEO is not done correctly, it can hurt you.
1. Changing Page Titles, SEO Titles, and Meta Descriptions
There are several places on a page that tells Google what the primary keyword for that is and what it should show it for. The page title, SEO title and meta description are primary places that give Google information about your page contents. Updating the content in these sections will change the way Google sees the page and there’s a good chance you’ll lose traffic for the keywords that page showed up for.
This doesn’t mean you can’t make changes to these sections of a page, but it shouldn’t be done without research and understanding the impact it will have on your search traffic. Before making changes, check in the Google Search Console to see what the pages shows up for and if it is getting clicks. If you see a lot of clicks coming to the page, you may want to hold off on making updates…unless there is a really compelling reason.
2. Deleting Pages From Your Site
When you remove a page on your site, two things happen:
- You are left with a broken page.
- You remove keywords that could be driving traffic to your site.
If you must delete a page from your site, you should set up a redirect to another page on the site that makes sense. If there isn’t another similar page to redirect the old page to, then just send people to the home page.
Not sure if you or someone else has deleted pages on the site in the past? Check the Google Search Console under “pages” for “not found 404” pages to see what is showing up. You can redirect the URL’s you find on that list.
3. Rewriting All Content On A Page
Once a page on your site has been indexed by Google, it will start showing up in search results for particular keyword variations. You can see what terms, phrases, and questions specific pages on your site are shown for in the Google Search Console. When you rewrite all of the content on a page of your site, it will lose traffic for keywords and phrases that were removed. Even if you try and keep some of the same keywords in the text, it will still affect what the page is shown for.
4. Changing The URL on a Page
If you change the URL of a page on your site, it will show as a broken link on your site, even if you keep the page content the same. Changing the URL can happen in different ways such as updating the URL to remove or add the:
- Parent page
- www
- slash
- words after the slash
In the case of having to update your URL, you will need to set up redirects to the new URL you created. If at all possible, don’t change the URL. While some of the SEO will transfer over, not all of it will.
5. Rebuilding Your Website And Ignoring Your Old Site
When you rebuild your website, you can actually give your organic traffic a boost…if you do it right. However, if you change all of the content, URL’s, titles, metas, etc. you are starting over on your organic traffic. To protect your SEO investment, you have to do your best to:
- Keep the content mostly the same across the site.
- Transfer over all pages and blogs from the old site.
- Use the same SEO titles, metas, and H1’s on each page.
- Keep the URL’s the same.
We know that in a rebuild there is going to be some amount of changes that must be made. However, doing the best you can to minimize those updates will keep your site from losing all of the organic traffic you’ve gained.
6. Changing or Hiding Your Address on Google Business
Your Google Business listing is like a second website. It can be a big source of calls from new clients. However, if you have to change your address or hide it, it will cause a big drop off in calls. In our experience, most listings take a hit for at least 6 months after an address change. Some listings take even longer than that to recover. The biggest hit is when you make a lot of changes on your website at the same time you update the address on your listing.
There are times that you cannot control having to change the address on the listing. If it simply cannot be avoided, just be prepared that it will take a toll on your calls. The best thing to do is immediately update data aggregators with the new information and starte building citations for your new address.
These are the things you need to do in order to protect your investment in your SEO. Unfortunately, we’ve seen a lot of our clients make decisions in the past that have caused them to lose their place in line in organic search. Sometimes, we can do damage control and get their traffic back. Other times, we can’t get a site to recover from the changes that were made fully.
