A couple of SEO questions

[bensd]

I am just about to take on a very old website which used to be an ecommerce site. The website is still live and appears in the serps (page 2 for main keyword) however, hasn't been updated in years and you can't place orders.

I have the following questions:

There is going to be a whole new website however, it is 1/2 months off being ready to go live. Should I a) keep the website as it is b) upload a holding page with new graphics saying "coming soon" etc or c) put up a minisite with lots of articles and fresh content?

The domain for the website is a generic product domain keywordkeyword.co.uk. Most of the old backlinks to the site have "keyword keyword uk" as the anchor text. Should i try and have these links changed to "keyword keyword" or just focus on trying to get new backlinks?

Any opinions would be greatly recieved.

 

[GaryT]

Hi Ben

Ditch the old site and re-direct all the old URLs back to the main domain, if your doing it in php use:

<?
header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
header( "Status: 301 Moved Permanently" );
header( "Location: http://www.new-url.com/" );
exit(0); //
?>


Stick a "pre-launch" site on their a few pages detailing USPs of the new site, contact info, preferably a form that works an xml sitemap and add a new page every few weeks until launch of the new one for spider food

Build links to the home page, and create some social media profiles. Maybe order some articles in so you don't have to do them yourself. New links would be best, although nothing wrong with optimising the old ones

Best

Gary

 

[bensd]

Hi Gary,

Thanks for your reply.

Do I put the code in the new site? I'm not going to have access to the old site to make changes to the old pages.

 

[Retired_member41]

Hi Ben

Ditch the old site and re-direct all the old URLs back to the main domain, if your doing it in php use:

<?
header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
header( "Status: 301 Moved Permanently" );
header( "Location: http://www.new-url.com/" );
exit(0); //
?>


Stick a "pre-launch" site on their a few pages detailing USPs of the new site, contact info, preferably a form that works an xml sitemap and add a new page every few weeks until launch of the new one for spider food

Build links to the home page, and create some social media profiles. Maybe order some articles in so you don't have to do them yourself. New links would be best, although nothing wrong with optimising the old ones

Best

Gary

Ok part of this I see, but are you really suggesting for an ecommerce site currently ranking well that he does this? With all the changes at google, yahoo and bing?

You better get on to the guys who rescued the chillean miners, cos thats how far down google you will end up.

 

[expertc]

If your site in question has a PR (even if it's 0) - do not touch it until your new site is ready to go! No holding pages, parking, etc. If G indexed 100 pages - let it stay 100 pages. If your site is old enough then each page has its rank. If you park you get only 1 page indexed.

I've done that zillions of times with B2B so I know how it works

So my advise - keep everything as it is until your new site is ready to go. Then put new site up at once. Only after that change anchor text, links, etc.
Good luck.

 

[retired_member13]

...Should I a) keep the website as it is b) upload a holding page with new graphics saying "coming soon" etc or c) put up a minisite with lots of articles and fresh content?

....Should i try and have these links changed to "keyword keyword" or just focus on trying to get new backlinks?

IMO (and anything on SEO is likely to be a best-case-scenario opinion TBH):

1) Keep the website as it is until you are ready to launch the new one. The reason? G doesn't really like sites chopping and changing - the reason being that it doesn't like ranking a site and then potentially having it changed to some low trust spammy rip off - as such newly launched sites on established URLs often drop back before "trust" is re-established. It might be worth adding some new content to the existing site if you can though - if this new content is a part of the new site as well as the old one it'll help to act as a bridge and give the site continuity.
2) Leave the existing links and focus on building new links. Having UK in the links isn't a deal breaker, and getting people to change links can be time consuming.

 

[Edwin]

Keep the old site as is, and then replace it gradually if you can, and redirect each old URL to the equivalent new URL (or batch related old URLs together and redirect them to the one equivalent new URL). Never ever ever 301 an entire old site to the homepage, that's the quickest way to get tossed out of Google!

 

[getmein]

I'd also suggest you wait with the redirects till the new site is live. Go and run a link report at majesticseo and find out which of the deep pages have got links - it's going to be more important to 301 pages with links. Given that you may change the content of the site, the new site will get indexed, but if you don't redirect deep pages with links to the appropriate new page, you'll lose the benefits of those links.