Tuesday, March 26, 2013

SEO Challenges: New Site Launch Or Major Updates


SEO Challenges: New Site Launch Or Major Updates

    1. Too many decision makers. This is one of the more basic headaches. Product marketing, engineering, PR and the executive branch can all weigh-in in ways that can have you ripping your hair out. This is definitely one of the most prominent problems in any corporation or vertically structured company. Even where I work now with it's horizontally based structure, there is still a whole system of checks and balances (not nearly as lengthy as some places) but it is to ensure quality and consistency with the brand. Good products get turned out, it just takes longer because of the channels. Give and take on new web development and especially content development.
    2. Many development priorities. This is often the most frustrating challenge, because it is the hardest one to combat. Other priorities may well be more important in the short term than what you are pushing for. Or, worse, it just makes it harder for you to get key players to buy into your idealistic view of the best way to build the new website.  I have definitely run into this problem as well. I have a large todo list where several things have been on it for more than a month's time because whether I want to finish it or not, daily tasks pop up taking a significant amount of time away from what could be a good product. After a month's time, often enough the priority gets shifted or the project gets altered which means re-working what has been partially or nearly fully completed to take into account these changes. Agile development becomes very tough in this setting.
    3. Ignorance of SEO. You still run into those that think that SEO is unimportant. Yes, they are still out there. I dug into this a bit in my article, Why Do Brands Overlook the SEO Opportunity for Non-Branded Keywords? It can be a daily struggle - where I previously worked we wanted to be #1 for "bowling balls" globally without investing any time in SEO. This was clearly an easy task let alone no time allocated to it because "it's not in the budget" so I should work on this during my lunch or after work.
    4. Misinformation About SEO. This one is worse. The exec who thinks they know something, but the information is wrong, just might drive you mad. Just last week at SMX West, I was talking to one exec that told me they had just finished updating the meta keywords on 1800 to their pages. To them, this was SEO. The lost time is certainly one bad part of this, but worse still, to this exec, the SEO for the site was done. (I took it upon myself to set them straight.) Thank God you did because I can't stand how often this happens still in the work force. It's abhorrently clear that people don't listen as much as they talk. Face Palm.
    5. Misconceptions. The belief that SEO is Hopeless. I haven't run into this anywhere yet, but the definitely think that Adwords PPC / SEO is in the same boat and the changes should happen equally as fast.
Great way to start the day - reading a great post on SEO Review from Search Engine Land. They have a lot of high quality guest bloggers and I liked this one in particular this morning.

http://searchengineland.com/seo-opportunities-begin-well-before-new-website-development-152172


7 comments:

  1. Thank you so much for great post.. Lots of useful info here. I am sending it to several friends also sharing in delicious. And of course, thank you for your effort!

    Quan Scire
    www.webstarttoday.com

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    1. I'm glad you liked it! Thanks for the comment and if you ever have ideas on what else to write about please feel free to drop me a line.

      I'll try to keep these types of posts coming!

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  2. I like your articles. We should value the right information. Everyone knows the wrong topic of SEO. Thank you, my programmer friend.

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    Replies
    1. Anytime! :) I'll make sure to keep some good ones coming along. Thanks for following!

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