Seven Signs That Your Website Is In Need of a Serious Overhaul
As a website designer/SEO/complete-toolbox-of-skill sets-kinda-guy, I’ve had the privilege to see some pretty terrible designs, some awesome designs, and website development decisions that boggle the mind. From companies like adtechonline attempting to sell online marketing services to designers attempting to sell their own design services, I am appalled whenever I see disgustingly haphazard sites masquerading as service providers. Now, I’m not a 100% complete expert myself yet (I still have a ways to go to perfect my design skills and getting them to where I want to be), but I am at least able to write valid code, ensure proper syntax depending on the document type, and make darn sure that my sites operate well on browsers other than IE. If your website displays some (or all of these if you’re really unlucky), perhaps it’s time to reconsider a complete overhaul?
Your site has been banned from the Google index.
While this may not need a real overhaul, it is imperative to at least have a professional SEO take a look at it and figure out what’s up. Being banned from Google means that your website will not be able to take part in traffic offerings, unless you have a way of generating traffic via other avenues.
Your code doesn’t validate.
Valid code does not contribute to higher rankings, but it does help from a design standpoint. Valid code is extremely important for cross browser compatibility and overall site usability. However, what’s even more important is the addition of specific coding “hacks” to make code 100% cross platform compatibile. From an SEO point of view, valid code does not help with higher rankings at all. In fact, Google’s Matt Cutts officially states that validation is not necessary to achieve higher rankings. Validating your code can contribute to the overall quality of the website, can be better able to be and can be more accessible to people of varying disabilities by following the W3C’s accessibility guidelines as well. There are some really good reasons to use W3C validation vs. not using it at all.
Your site has tons of duplicate content.
Really now? You really want to utilize duplicate content that you plagiarized (*ahem* stole) from another website? Okay, that’s your prerogative, but would you take a step back for a second please? Doing this will only ensure that your website is one of the sites that aren’t returned in the results when Google fetches websites for a specific query. The more unique your content is, the better your performance in the Google SERPs will be. Now I want to distinguish one thing – there really isn’t a duplicate content “penalty”. In fact, the way search engines work is that they want to deliver the most unique, valuable content for a specific query. If your site has content that appears on many other sites attempting to rank for that same term, then you can kiss your chances of appearing at the top of the SERPs good-bye.
Your site has no content.
This doesn’t mean just images folks. If your site has absolutely no content whatsoever (and this does mean text content with substance and an eventual goal to help your users), it may be time to figure out how you’re going to attract clients. Unique content for your specific industry is absolutely important to help develop trust with the SE’s, your clients, and develop a reputation as an authority resource within your industry. So if you have no idea when and where your website’s going to go, then it’s a good idea to hire a professional (or at least a consultant) to review your site and get you started in the right direction.
Your site has the same design that’s been there since a number of years ago.
While a stable website with a design that hasn’t been changed for a while is all well and good, if it has been more than a year since you have changed it, then you may want to consider a website overhaul from the ground up. Just like food, websites can become stale and uninteresting if there’s nothing happening on them at all. The same stale content can become boring if it’s continuously part of the exact same design day after day. I would suggest changing your website’s main design at least once a year. The reason why I don’t suggest going more than that is because rapid changes can have negative effects on your rankings, and if you continue changing rapidly just for the sake of changing the site then you run the risk of your rankings dropping.
Your site is all black hat.
Let’s face it – a black hat site, when done in the right ways, can be a good thing to gain search engine rankings quickly. Some of the most effective SEOs can be grey hats, utilizing a mixture of solid white hat techniques and solid black hat techniques. However, when done in excess and done completely the wrong way, using saturating black hat techniques throughout your whole site can be detrimental to its SERP performance. In fact, performing a ton of black hat techniques when you don’t know what you are doing and why they are being done is a surefire recipe for disaster. So, if you have found that a previous rogue SEO has littered your website completely with black hat techniques, and your site has been banned, it’s probably a good idea to reconsider your strategy. In addition, if your off site SEO (link building) has been completely made up of black hat techniques, then it’s imperative that you start with a new domain. Otherwise, you will never escape the negative reputation that has been assigned to your site by Google and other search engines.
The focus of your website has changed.
Whenever you decide to concentrate on another area, or you’ve developed a plan to change the focus of your website to something else, then it’s a good idea to re-build the site from the ground up, including the domain. The reason why is that there are many existing associations with the current domain that include clients, links, and social media associations that are still a part of that particular domain name. The one thing to keep in mind is that if you decide to keep the existing domain name of an authority website (say AlBundysShoes.com) whose focus you plan to change, to something entirely different (say from AlBundysShoes.com to PeggyBundysBonBons.com) then your rankings will dip and you will still have to start over because you’re also targeting brand-new keywords. The better way to do this would be to utilize PeggyBundysBonBons.com and have AlBundysShoes.com 301 redirected to PeggyBundysBonBons.com, that way the old domain name’s link juice will flow to the new domain name, and you can use both concurrently while telling Google that the old domain name will no longer be used for that website.
While the above is not an all inclusive list, and many websites will need to be studied more in detail to determine the depth of their modifications, this should at least give a partial list of major items to look out for – in general. For more specific changes – and this remains true if you’re not an SEO expert or design guru – then you may want to consult with a reputable professional. This one step can mean the difference between an abysmal website and a website that destroys the competition.