Web Revamp and SEO Horror

© Photographer: Almagami | Agency: Dreamstime.com

Recently, I had an opportunity to work with an external party to revamp the organization’s website and to perform SEO to improve our search engine ranking.  My predecessor has set the stage, signed the agreement, done the whole negotiations and I took the execution when I joined.  Things did not really go so smoothly, or rather I would say its more like the beginning of a nightmare.  Here’s my story …

FORGO THE OLD DOMAIN NAME
Firstly, the web developer told us that we have to forgo our old domain name because it was impossible to work on a live site.  I was beyond shock.  All web developers know that they can work on local and then transfer the site to the live site OR they can work on a separate folder and later create redirect page on the index.html OR maybe have other better ideas than to just say “we can’t develop the new site on your old domain because it is a live site, thus we have to buy a new domain for the web revamp”.  We had no choice but to accept it because we have already made advance payment for the revamp, even though it meant forgoing the 4-year-old domain name which has a Google PageRank of 4 and garnered many back links.  It was not a perfect site, but nevertheless the business grew on it over the years.  Asking us to forgo the old domain seemed like a pretty bad advise for a start.

6 MONTHS TO DEVELOP ONE WEBSITE
We were left without a choice and we had to move on.  The team put the requirements together, brainstormed, worked on a project plan for the revamp to begin.  They proudly told us that it will be a custom-developed CMS.  In my mind, I felt that there was a hope for the new website as a CMS would almost certainly be easy to update, have a host of functionalities we could tap on, flexible and most importantly it would have SEO-capabilities.  We did everything we were asked to – submit keywords, provide the framework and we waited, and waited …  The wait went on for 6 months!

WE CAN’T DO…
Just as we were beginning to see it being developed, we were faced with a bunch of “can’t do”.  We wanted to insert a html-based form into the CMS so that we can capture enquiries but we were told that it is not possible to do so.  We were shocked!  What type of website can’t do a form to capture enquiries?  Isn’t that what websites are for?  I told my team to develop our own html code and we will do the insertion ourselves when we get the login and passwords.  Then we were told that javascripts might not work.  They can’t do scroll down menu (they finally figured it out)… and the list goes on.  I asked what CMS are they using as in my knowledge of using WordPress and Joomla, both were simple to use and flexible in many ways.  They refused to tell us, quoting that it is a “customized CMS”.  Of course I finally found out by peeping into the source codes – I can’t say what CMS it is here because I’m not trying to belittle anyone.  It is a fairly unknown open source CMS which development was halted temporarily by its developers.

In the website of the CMS, it was quoted that the CMS was developed in a way so that even a non-technie would be able to manage it.  Its a noble idea, but no matter what I still think that businesses should leave their web development and maintenance on the hands of someone else whom could get the job done faster and saves everyone time.  Not everyone can manage a CMS no matter how easy it may be.  Just imagine this ~ you are a business owner and your focus is to develop your business, it definitely is not in maintaining the website.  The most ideal way of maintaining a website is to get the internal IT staff to do it (he/she should be savvy enough about websites to do it) or simply outsource it to the professionals.

Simply said, I’m not in the opinion of opting for a simplified CMS for the sake of easy maintenance, because you lose out many elements that are important for the website.

SEO?
Enough with the CMS that could not do anything but display content ~ we had another major issue.  The person in charge of our account either came from Mars or is completely no clue about his job.  He is complete blank when it came to website, SEO or anything about the internet. This is the first time I’m meeting someone from the web industry who is so clueless about anything everything.  I was expecting the person to have at least basic knowledge about SEO and web development, but clearly he was a total let down.  Its pretty interesting to have a “SEO conversation” with him …

“What will you do with regards to SEO?”, I asked.
“We will use your keywords and you can see your website traffic improves in 2 to 3 months”, he answered.
“When I go to Google.com and key in my keywords, I can see the website in first page?”, I tried to pry…
“Yes. You can see that the traffic at your website goes up in 2 to 3 months”, he quipped

“Tell me what you are going to do with regards to SEO?”, I tried again.
“Let me show you a report on how the website will improve in terms of traffic”

My patience is wearing thin because he clearly don’t know anything about SEO.  I did my homework prior to getting into the meeting and I found that the newly revamped site had no Meta Tag, Meta Description, Robot text or even keywords!!  It was obvious that the company is a rip-off!  I am no expert in SEO but I know some basics stuff and of course, as a paid service provider, I expected them to provide more than just “increase traffic” mantra?

SEO REPORT
What would you expect from a SEO report?  Some very intelligent stuff – whatever it may be.  Guess what I got?  The web hosting report on statistics of web visitors!!  They call this the SEO report!!!  Oh my goodness.. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.  Even my team knows that the report is standard in all web hosting control panel.  He said “This is the report we show all our clients”.  In my heart, I’m just thinking of how many people they have conned…

My conclusion?  We have to accept the website even though its completely not what we wanted.  I don’t deny that there are REAL professionals out there who do a fantastic job developing websites, providing consultancy and advise on SEO and SEM and much more, but the ones I’ve had a chance to work with were a complete boo-hoo.  Unless you are very well versed with the web, its not easy to tell the genuine from the not.  Do your homework and ask them questions.  If they start giving you answers that don’t make sense, start finding another vendor.

p/s : I am tempted to start my own marketing firm to provide REAL marketing advise, how to save money & time while outsourcing part of the marketing functions and most importantly, how to get the best for your marketing dollars.