The Law of Unintended Consequence & SEO
Educational case study re re-design....://www.clickz.com/experts: "For pure-play e-commerce sites, a redesign or CMS switch can produce even more disastrous results. In one instance, I was called in to make repairs after the organization's Web-based sales dropped 75 percent 120 days after implementing a redesign and a CMS change. The implementation had drained business resources, so last-minute plans for a 301 permanent redirect database were scrapped. Implemented instead was a 302 temporary redirect to the home page only. The site didn't have an informative 404 error page.In this case, a massive PPC campaign provided immediate relief for dwindling revenues, and a rewrite module was implemented to transform search engine unfriendly dynamic URLs into automatically updated static documents. File structure changes also had to be made to the site architecture so replicated content could be managed by the robots.txt file. Old key entry pages that had been indexed by the search engines received permanent redirects rather than triggering the 404 error page, which also got a makeover.
E-mail and viral marketing campaigns were simultaneously launched in time to impact the business's seasonal sales cycle. Revenue recovery (a return to comparable pre-redesign revenues after implementing the SEO plan) took about nine weeks. Stable revenue growth took about six months to achieve, as marketing costs were pared down to balance organic search engine referral increases.
Moving Violation
The e-commerce business and its staff wouldn't have endured these hardships if management had consulted with a competent SEO expert before implementing a redesign or CMS switch. The ad-driven, content-based site wouldn't have teetered on the brink of ruin if planning for the site launch had included an organic SEO plan and an augmented advertising budget.
Where search engine referrals are concerned, the law of unintended consequence is merciless. Consult with a SEO expert before making critical decisions that could put your business out of business."
posted by Jen @ 5:38 AM
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