Comments on: New Officeworks Website Creates Havoc for Search Engines

By: Inell Halliwell

Inell Halliwell — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 01:57:13 +0000

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By: Tom Petryshen

Tom Petryshen — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 04:06:33 +0000

To be fair to Jim, I doubt it was his decision to ignore the old site. As a large business, the decision would have been made higher up or by committee regardless of whether Jim believed it was necessary or not.

I want to thank Jim for taking the time to respond and shed some light on how Officeworks approached the topic which is much appreciated.

The goal of this post was purely to shine some light on a major issue which we believe is more due to lack of awareness over ignorance (although there is still a lot of ignorance out there).

Disclaimer: And yes we were also trying to raise awareness of our expertise and services in this area.

By: daylightdave

daylightdave — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 07:06:11 +0000

More…
Just in case there is any doubt. SEO is not really a technical issue. It’s about Distribution, Marketing and SALES. I am sure there is someone within Office Work who gets that. Why is SEO about Sales? SEO done well will increase your distribution and reach and if the you have compelling Page titles and Meta descriptions (that match the content for that Page) then you be getting the Marketing message across and that should increase the likelihood of your listing in the search results being clicked on.
So you are now getting in front of more people, with the right message and even if your conversion rate (how your site performs) stays the same you’ll get more sales. So SEO can compensate for a bad site design making it even more important to get right when you are migrating to a new site because you never know how it’s actually going to work out in the real world.

By: daylightdave

daylightdave — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 06:44:49 +0000

Great post Tom – It still amazes me the lack of consideration businesses give to the affect of site redesigns and migration from an SEO perspective. I think they get a bit carried away with the process, which results in them throwing out the baby with the bath water.
I don’t believe Jim could possibly be in a senior position at Office works and he certainly doesn’t have access to their analytics because I am sure, in there he would see what the impact has been from this school boy migration effort. If he is, then he should be deducted the lost revenue caused by this oversight or join the dole queue.
And Jim, if you seriously doubt the value of SEO to Office works then frankly you don’t understand what you are judging.
Most companies don’t account for 404 and certainly don’t monitor them as they should – Even if they have a site map on the 404 you’ll most likely not find Analytic tracking on these pages. I suppose out of sight out of mind.

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 04:15:23 +0000

I wasn’t aware of the migration issue with regards to SEO. What kind of things do you need to be aware of specifically – i’m a non-techy mind you, but need to know in a general sense so I can keep current and potential clients aware of the potential issues.

Hi Bill,

Sadly, most people in Australia are not aware of the need for migration (hence the need to share with others). It’s often an after thought, only noticed once traffic and sales fall off.

For small websites, there a few main issues to look out for:

1) Understanding where the existing traffic and links are coming from

2) Using 301 redirects to direct visitors and search engines from the old pages to the new ones when you launch

3) Making sure the new site is optimmised and does not present any technical barriers to the crawlers (i.e. doesn’t use a 302 redirect from http://www.domainname.com.au to http://www.domainname.com.au/Pages/Home.aspx as Microsoft Sharepoint does).

The costs vary depending on the size of the website. Our fees can range from a few thousand dollars to over twenty thoursand dollars for larger sites. But in the later case, we’re analysing data, crunching numbers, providing forecasts and writing specific instructions based on the client’s requirements. For lager websites we also recommend that companies have one of our staff member available to fix any issues that pop up after launch before the cause grief. Like SEO though, there is no cookie cutter approach.

I’d be happy to chat in person to discuss costs in your case.