Hi guys,

 

I'm currently redeveloping a website for a local removals company and it's the 1st site I've done/redeveloped where they already had a fairly decent SEO position (even though their website looks awful). For example they currently rank well under "student removals birmingham". I want to make sure that I maintain this position and wouldn't mind some pointers.

 

The existing website is http://www.amremovals.co.uk/ and the development site is http://test.digitalgroupmedia.com/amremovals/ which is still a work in progress, I haven't got as far as installing any SEO plug-ins or even populating the site with content yet

Hi stanza.. I saw both of the sites. Greets! comparing to the existing site, your new site is awesome. As far I saw, found that your home page lacks "Meta description" which is very important. Also your Text/HTML ratio is 30.75% which is somewhat okay but if you manage to get it around 50% it would be Nice. robots.txt & XML Sitemaps were also missing but as your site is still in progressing stage it doesn't count now. see you pal..

Edited June 5, 201214 yr by Renaissance-Design
Linkspam removed.

The content on their website will be the most important thing to take note of. I'd try and change the style of the site without changing too much of the content, which unless they are paying you to change the content, I wouldn't expect you would.

Not very competitive keyword terms and very easy to rank for. What level of traffic are you hoping for and what keyword terms are you aiming to target?

 

I assume you are going for removals Birmingham.

 

Focus on nice content with a few keywords in the content. Keywords nearer the start and in heading will help, but don't over do it. use a few variations of the keywords will help. Obviously check the grammar and readability.

 

Title and meta description is important. Apart from that I would focus on building awareness of the site through social media and building back links. These are the main focal points

Edited June 5, 201214 yr by neil0wen

I agree with what's begin said already. Although its great that they rank for that keyword, its not very competitive and won't bring you much success with traffic.

 

Concentrate on your content to begin with and get some exciting sales copy on there. Make it fresh, exciting and engaging. The website is there to sell a service primarily, not to rank well.

 

Look using a 301 redirect as I assume your URL structure will change as well?

 

Ill add more later when I've had a brew

 

EDIT:

 

I'm back. To be honest it shouldn't take much to rank higher for that keyword. With a good structure, nice internal linking and some online promotion you'll be ranking in no time.

 

Like I said, make sure old pages are 301's to the new pages.

 

I'd target your main page for generic keywords and then target each sub-page for their own keywords. So use http://test.digitalgroupmedia.com/amremovals/services/student-moves/ for student moving services etc.

 

Otherwise you'll dilute the homepage with various keywords. Target the home page with 2 or 3 main keywords that are a variation of your primary keyword.

 

Attack each page in a same way but with different keywords. Primary keyword for student page would be "Student removals" then use keywords such as "Student movers in birmingham" and "Student removal service" etc. The more you promote for your primary keyword, the more powerful your secondary keywords etc will become. The slight variation will then grab searches for a location.

 

Hope that helps? I know you only asked about maintaining position but I thought it could help

Thanks for the pointers guys, I really appreciate it. I just wanted to make sure I didn't inadvertently do anything destructive. If I get the time, I'd love to go to town on this site's SEO but to be frank, I'm not being paid for it and don't have the time spare otherwise, so it's really just a matter of using the content from the old site for now.

Hi guys,

 

I'm currently redeveloping a website for a local removals company and it's the 1st site I've done/redeveloped where they already had a fairly decent SEO position (even though their website looks awful). For example they currently rank well under "student removals birmingham". I want to make sure that I maintain this position and wouldn't mind some pointers.

 

The existing website is http://www.amremovals.co.uk/ and the development site is http://test.digitalgroupmedia.com/amremovals/ which is still a work in progress, I haven't got as far as installing any SEO plug-ins or even populating the site with content yet

 

 

Just do some more research. Doing extensive keyword research helps you a lot in placement & ranking of your keywords in search engines. Write Content accordingly. Make your website more strong but changing the content in regular intervals. Try to make some On-page change and build quality back links. do all the off-page activities. you will get good ranking.

You could probably try linking the new site to your old site after your new site gains some credibility. That would do some good help and keep your old site consistently good. Work on both the sites equally to maintain the balance.