Web Design Company Destroyed My Organic Rankings After Website Redesign
The impact a web design company that is reckless about existing organic rankings can destroy all of the SEO work that was previously done to your website. Sadly, it happens all the time and business owners who thought they were improving their website by switching web design companies end up hurting their business.
Inexperienced and careless web companies that rebuild websites without looking at existing SEO ranking, organic traffic and other key metrics before reinventing a website will destroy your organic ranking the moment they go live with your new website. The web development company’s approach and expertise in search engine optimization are detrimental to preserving and improving your search engine positions.
Web Developer Ruined My Website’s SEO
Unfortunately, many web developers mishandle a website’s optimization because they are inexperienced in SEO. We have seen it countless times when we audit a website after a business owner contacts our company about search engine optimization services. While the website may be visually appealing, the web developer neglects to implement SEO best practices during website development.
You must work with a knowledgeable and experienced web developer who understands the importance of SEO and follows search engine optimization guidelines to ensure your website is built with functionality and optimization in mind.
Website Redesign Mistakes That Destroy SEO
Organic page ranking issues occur when the web developer you hired fails to implement SEO best practices during the website redesign process. Some common technical issues that arise during website design include slow page loading times, poor site architecture, broken links and missing META titles and descriptions. These things can negatively impact user experience and your website’s rankings in Google search results.
Website redesign mistakes can have a detrimental impact on SEO, destroying the search engine optimization efforts of a website. Common errors include changing or removing important URLs without proper redirection, leading to broken links and loss of organic traffic. Neglecting to preserve or optimize essential on-page elements like meta tags, headers, and keyword placement can diminish search visibility. A poorly executed redesign may also lead to slow page load times, affecting user experience and search rankings. Failing to conduct proper SEO analysis and planning before the redesign can also lead to losing keyword rankings and organic traffic.
To avoid these mistakes, it’s crucial to involve SEO professionals throughout the redesign process and carefully plan and execute SEO-friendly strategies to ensure the continuity and improvement of search engine optimization.
Example of Website Redesign Mistakes Destroying SEO
In the screenshot taken from Google Search Console, you’ll see how SEO rankings were destroyed after a new web design company rebuilt a website and didn’t use best practices. Within a few weeks of the new website going live, their SEO rankings were ruined.
Bad SEO Companies Can Wreck Your Search Engine Optimization
Most website owners do not know until it is too late that they hire a bad SEO company to take over their website’s search engine optimization. It isn’t until they begin to see disastrous results from the work done to their website.
Lousy SEO companies often lack the necessary expertise and fail to keep up with the latest industry trends and algorithm updates. They may use outdated optimization techniques that are ineffective or detrimental to your website’s visibility. In some cases, they may neglect important aspects of SEO, such as proper on-page optimization, content quality, and user experience, leading to poor rankings and diminished organic traffic.
Some signs you are about to hire an unscrupulous search engine optimization company are promises of quick results and ranking number one for keywords.
Using black hat SEO tactics such as buying low-quality backlinks, hiding text on a page or stuffing a page with keywords can wreck your organic ranking. While these can show results quickly, they are short-term and hurt your website in the long run. Black hat strategies that violate search engine optimization best practices can result in Google penalizing your website. If your website is flagged for violating SEO guidelines, it could be deleted from organic search engine results.
How to Recognize Spammy SEO Companies
Spammy SEO companies make many empty promises and mislead business owners into thinking they will quickly rank at the top of Google for high-impression keyword searches. When you first talk with an SEO company, you’ll deal with an experienced salesperson who knows precisely what to say, and they tend to make promises that are too good to be true. Once you sign a contract and are locked in, your website is handed over to an employee who is inexperienced with SEO and told to provide a cookie-cutter SEO strategy they use for every single client.
These spammy SEO strategies usually consist of the following:
Backlinking/Link Spamming
Relying heavily or solely on backlinks as an SEO strategy can be detrimental. While natural backlinks can help with visibility, focusing on adding links as the primary search engine optimization tactic is a waste of money. Bad SEO companies focus on backlinks because it is a low-effort high-profit service for them. Their mentality is quantity over quality which can lead to ranking penalties from search engines.
Keyword Stuffing
SEO keyword stuffing is a practice bad SEO companies use pretty often. The excessive and unnatural use of keywords on a web page may sound like a good strategy. However, it is not. The overuse of target keywords and phrases placed within content, image alt tags and META tags to manipulate organic rankings is considered keyword stuffing. Excessively and unnaturally incorporating keywords or repetitive use of words into a web page’s content, meta tags, or code to manipulate search engine rankings will not get your web pages to rank.
Generating AI Written Content
While AI can be used for writing content, it should only be used as a tool for research rather than replacing a content writer. Lousy SEO companies are generating content written by artificial intelligence and trying to pass it off as written by humans. Google is starting to take notice of AI-generated content and has concerns about accuracy and transparency because the search engine wants websites to have unique human-focussed articles for your key audience.