Study of the decline of a website

[simonm]

Hi,

This is a tale of what happens when a hard working customer grabbing website is taken over by a self styled marketing and web design company! I would certainly not claim to be a good page designer, my skills are in web promotion and what I would call the users journey from search engine through to emailing or picking up the phone to make contact. Design comes in to it, but it has to be to support the main task of the website, not to allow the designer to get their rocks off! Fundamentally, this is about the blind leading the blind. People who know nothing about the web styling themselves web developers because they can draw pretty pictures.

I commented about a month or so ago about the taking over a of a website that I had been managing for some years by a 'marketing' company.

See: The decline and fall of a great website

At that point I was working for the company, now I have washed my hands of them, even though I was asked to do the SEO for the new site. Even without seeing it, having spoken to the designers and been told that I would have no input into structure and content, well, it was not my site to optimise.

Without naming the company, I have listed the search terms that Google shows them at No1. (This is using a variety of tools and proxys so that my previous browsing and clicking hasn't poisoned the results and so that even though I have access to Google webmasters tools, I am using information in the public domain! )

Here's a list to be proud of, all are (soon to be were) number 1 on google! NB. When you click on these links, you will see the new site, not the site that gained this position.

food testing ; water testing ; legionnaires disease air conditioning ; water analysis ; pharmaceutical analysis ; water testing services ; food analysis ; microbiological testing ; air conditioning legionella ; chemical analysis of water ; food laboratories ; food laboratory testing ; milk testing ; testing water quality ; water quality testing ; air conditioning bacteria ; food analysis laboratories ; legionnaires disease from air conditioning ; microbiology testing ; pesticide residue analysis ; pharmaceutical testing ; vitamin analysis.

If you try any of these searches, look at the call to action on the search list. It may be No1, but still needs to engage with the browser so they click!

My guess is that Google will start to remove entries in about a week or so, so the above will start to be out of date from mid November.

The client is a major player in their field, I know how important the web has been in bringing in customers. I have told them that using this 'design' company will remove their web placement fro generic searches, the 'design' company has contradicted this advice.

What I think has happened is that because the client has pretty well dominated the search listings for their target keywords for years, they thought they had them by right, not because little old me was beavering away keeping them there and because they had the best website (SEO wise) possible!

The site has now been totally re-designed with all optimisation removed. The company that has done this has assured the client that the work they going through having a very highly optimised site will not be effected.

As to the design of the site, my wife thinks its very pretty, but isn't sure what the point of it is. A lot of the text can't actually be read, no alt tags, very little content or internal contextual links. For the client this is going to be a disaster.

The marketing company?
Well, they called themselves a marketing company, in fact they are more accurately a graphics and design company, could be excellent at making brochures but not much else. I wish graphics design companies would stop calling themselves marketing companies, the expertise is fundamentally different!

Okay the above reads like sour grapes, but I am sure many others have similar tales to tell!

[weegillis]

You're going to have to let it go, sometime, Simonm, may as well be now. Sucks to be the one called in a year from now to clean up someone else's mess but that may just have to be the case. Once you have another project underway, it will be easier to forget this one.

[Feydakin]

I get paid.. I work.. I move on.. I gave up caring a very long time ago.. Its sad to be this jaded about something I enjoy doing, but I know what I do works.. That's why I get paid..

All you can do is wait for them to come back, hat in hand, and charge them more the second time..

[Doc]

I'm going to have to go along with weegillis and Steve on this one, Simon. You did your job, and you did it well. But at the end of the day, it's their site, and they have to live with their decisions. Move on, do the next one as well or better, and be content that you gave your customers their money's worth.

And as Steve said, when they come back, charge them accordingly. They'll have seen their sales drop, and they'll know (or at least should) why it happened. They'll likely be glad to pay your price.

And if not, the hell with 'em!

[Feydakin]

Google, I have never prayed to you before.
I have no tongue for it.
No one, not even you, will remember if we were white hats or black.
Or if our links were follow or nofollow.
All that matters is that we took rank in a hard niche.
That's what's important!
Pagerank pleases you, Google...
So grant me one request. Grant me pagerank!
And if you do not listen, then to HELL with you!

[claybutler]

Well, I think it's important to care and to continue caring. The trick is to know what to care about. Self destructive clients need to be allowed to move on and deal with their decisions. If they come back, it needs to be on your terms.

You should care deeply about great clients. All clients start out great and deserve your emotional and professional commitment. This is not flipping burgers at McDonalds. People are putting their business and reputation in your hands. That's a special relationship that needs to be respected.

If, as things progress, your emotional and professional investment in your client is far beyond their investment in you, then it's time to pull back or set them free.

This clients needs to be set free. Just block it out for a while. You'll drive yourself crazy about what should have or could have been. Don't look at the new site and don't play around with the SERPs. Just let it rest.

[SEOMG]

Very frustrating, but it sounds like you are sitting in a great position to get work back when the company realize they've made a big mistake!

I guess by this stage, you may not want to work with them, or more to the point the 'marketing company', but I'd say it's likely you'll get the choice...

We have had similar situations a number of times & I guess the fact is a company often has more than one person telling them the best course of action and can often be romanced by flashing lights & nice graphics etc. If they make a mistake they're entitled to find out the hard way & maybe you'll get a chance to fix the mess if you'd like.

(You'll also feel a slight sense of satisfaction when telling the marketing company what they need to do..!)

[morestar]

Ya I agree with everyone and to make it clear, this entire situation is a positive. You did your work, you did it well and you're moving on...by this time next year, if you're right, they should be calling you again for a fix-up...and that is money in your pocket.