Keep Website Traffic Flowing
When Making Changes

The very nature of websites not only allows, but encourages, frequent change. One of the great features of the world wide web is the ability to update content instantly. Website changes however, can reduce website traffic if they are not carefully planned. And unless you’re on top of your website activity, you may not even know this is happening. Understanding the impact that different types of changes may have on your site traffic can enable you to take steps to keep the visitor traffic flowing.

Two of the major sources of web traffic are links from other websites that share common interests, and search engine results. Links and search engine results can connect either to your home page or to content-rich interior pages. Web changes need to be made judiciously to keep from negatively impacting these valuable sources of web traffic.

For our purposes, we can categorize most changes into four major types: content changes, creative changes, directory structure changes, and technology upgrades. Each of these type of changes can impact web traffic. However, there are solutions.

Content changes are necessary to keep your site current and of high interest. Content changes can alter your search engine traffic and therefore your website traffic. It is important to know if search engine rankings exist before making content revisions. If an interior page is ranked in major search engines, then protecting this ranking when making content changes is probably worthwhile. Search engine rankings are based on a number of factors such as document length, keyword frequency and keyword placement. If you have a top ranking and need to make content changes, then the safest approach is to keep these factors on your new page consistent with those on the current document.

Creative changes typically have no impact on web traffic unless you are converting html text to a graphic format. The graphic presentation of text can be more easily controlled when displayed in gif or jpg files rather than html. Html font characteristics are controlled by the browser. Using graphic files rather than gives the developer more presentation control.

The downside of presenting text in graphic files is that search engines cannot read this text. Headlines are an extremely important means of communicating your keywords to search engines. Putting headlines in a graphic file can impact your search engine ranking potential. And if your entire page contents consists of graphic files, all a search engine sees is that there are pictures on your page. Keeping page headlines and content in html format is an important factor in maintaining your search engine rankings.

Directory structure changes can be a major area for difficulties. Most likely we have all clicked on a top search engine listing only to reach an error page because the page had been removed. Do you think that the site manager intentionally removed a page that was bringing hundreds, maybe thousands of visitors to the site each month? Doubtful! These mistakes occur unintentionally when changes are implemented without understanding the impact such changes will incur. Directory structure changes frequently occur with major site revisions. As soon as a new directory structure is implemented, all links from other sites to your interior pages now generate error pages. Search engine results targeted at these now nonexistent interior pages will be removed when the search engine re-indexes your site, typically every 30 to 60 days.

Guarding against traffic reductions due to content and directory structure changes begins with understanding the sources for the website traffic. Your server log files will best identify your traffic sources. These files generate records each time someone visits your site. If the visitor clicked on a link from another site, the log file will typically identify the pages accessed as well as the referring site. If the visitor found your site through a search engine, the log file will typically identify the search engine and the keyword phrase used to reach your site. To access your log files, check with your hosting company, or your web services department if you site is hosted internally.

You can also check the quantity and source of links to your site. As search engine spiders travel the web categorizing content, they also record the links that they discover and travel. Online applications like MarketPosition.com’s LinkPopularityCheck (www.linkpopularitycheck.com) allow you to check the quantity and sources of your links in multiple search engines. When you have completed this research, you will know which pages and links you need to protect.

In looking at the problems caused from directory structure changes there are several solutions you can explore. The simplest solution is to rethink your strategy and selectively make directory structure changes that will protect existing linked pages. If this is not possible and wholesale changes must occur, there are a couple of other solutions that require a bit more work. First, you can contact the webmaster at each site linked to yours and provide them with the URL change. This solution works well for links, but will not preserve your search engine rankings.

A second method is to make your old URL and content a landing page. In other words, using similar content, let your old URL be another entry into your site. This solutions works for both links and search engine results. The old URL doesn’t have to be included in your primary navigation, but it will need to be linked from some other primary pages for search engines to find it. If this option is not feasible and you must change the directory structure for interior ranked pages, you are basically starting over with the search engines. Submit the new pages and be aware it will take time to re-establish your rankings.

Technologies such as Flash by Macromedia, frames, image maps, JavaScript, and dynamically generated web pages have greatly expanded both creative design and functional web capabilities. Unfortunately, the search engines frequently lack the ability to either read or find links on these pages. In many respects search engines are pretty basic creatures; what they do best is read html and follow html links. These technologies often block search engines from finding the content that produces top search engine results.

If your planning to implement one of the technologies on your website, ask your web developer about the impact of the new technology on your search engine results. If they don’t know, or you receive a puzzled look, you probably need to add someone who specializes in search engine optimization to your development team.

If you’ve already implemented one of these technologies, check your log files for problem areas by looking for changes in traffic volume. You can also often spot problem pages by viewing the html code. If you look at the html code and can’t find the links to other pages, or if the page content is not visible in the code, then search engines probably can’t find this information either. Here are a few examples.

Flash home pages look great, but Flash provides no content for search engines to index. If a search engine can’t find either the content and links to other pages, they can be blocked from reading your site.

While JavaScript drop-down boxes and image maps provide much cleaner-looking navigation than a list of html links, search engines don’t read or follow these links. If these technologies are the exclusive means of navigation for key pages, and html links don’t exist, whole sections of content can be blocked from search engine access.

Dynamically generated content can also present a problem to the search engines' ability to interior locate pages on your site. The URLs generated for dynamic content frequently contain the characters "?" and "=". Most search engines cannot interpret these characters, and will not read past them. For example, if your pages all begin with www.yoursite.com/index.asp?page=, followed by the source address, then you’re probably blocking many search engines from accessing these pages.

Solutions exist for each of these situations, so refraining from the use of these technologies is not required. However, remember that most solutions are not simple to employ and you’ll need professional help to resolve these problems.

This information was not presented to discourage you from making website changes as the need occurs or to intimidate you when adopting superior web technologies. It was presented, however, to inform you of the impact changes can have to your site. After all, the most important measurement of the success for your website is not how quickly you can implement changes or how creatively information can be presented, but rather the amount of qualified traffic and business your website generates.

		Search Engine Optimization Strategy:
	>> Stop Search Engine Spam! >>Web Site Theme >>Web Design With Search Engine Optimization Techniques >>Web Hosting & Search Engine Optimization >>Keyword Research w/ Ranking & Marketing Potential >>Content Development >>Strategic Keyword Placement >>Meta Tag Optimization >>Search Engine Spider Accessibility >>Increase Web Site Visibility >>Search Engine Submission & Indexing Time >>Monitoring, Tracking & Tweaking >>What To Do When Your Ranking Falls Search Engine Relationships & More... >> AllTheWeb >> Aesop >> Alta Vista >> AOL >> Daypop >> Google >> HotBot >> Inktomi >> iWon >> Lycos >> Netscape >> MSN Directories... >> LookSmart >> ODP - (DMOZ) >> Yahoo! More In This Site Business Directory Past Articles Site Map Privacy Policy & Disclaimer

Keep Website Traffic Flowing When Making Changes

More Past Articles From WSS

Keep Website Traffic Flowing
When Making Changes