Shout Digital’s head of growth, Matilda Toepfer, warns of an inexpensive yet all-too-common mistake brands and organisations developing new websites make, with dire consequences to follow. 

Glorious growth

Your company is growing. This is it – it’s a success – it’s making bank, connecting with consumers, fixing their problems, meeting their needs and wants. Customer service channels are managing the inevitable bumps. Both your customers, and you, want more. Is there a better feeling for a business owner than seeing growth within your grasp? 

New brick-and-mortar outlays require careful financial consideration because the brand awareness and immersive experience they create is often offset by limited geographical reach and operational costs. So, for now, you’ve decided the focus is on how to up your e-commerce game. 

The next set of e-commerce features probably doesn’t come cheap. If you’re a micro business, $30,000 might cover your upgrade. And for established enterprises, with a high sales volume, you may be spending up to $500,000 on a new website to capitalise on identified growth. 

Which is why good web developers – who know how to create gold-spun wire frames to draw in, hold fast and convert customers into sales and brand devotees – are a worthy investment. 

Keep the light on

But here’s where the warning comes in. While it’s tempting to think an investment of this size covers everything needed to make the switch from one website to another, many dedicated web developer companies lack the depth of experience and day-to-day exposure to the ever-changing landscape of SEO. It’s an entirely different set of expertise. And a good web developer will tell you that – they’re busy optimising experience, not monitoring the tension of the website’s reach across the search network. 

A switch without an SEO strategy can risk putting businesses in literal digital darkness. Search engines don’t automatically trust your website changes, may think your well-visited pages no longer exist and your traffic – gulp, slurp – goes, in real time, to your competitors.

The risk of not integrating a SEO into a new web launch could be so devastating it’s almost unbelievable. I’ve seen national and international brands watch traffic (and its related revenue) plummet by up to 80 per cent.  Immediately. It’s blood-draining-from-your-face stuff. 

I’ve seen large retail brands move from the likes of Magento to Shopify, having spent upwards of $300,000 making the switch off the back of a compelling business case that promises the C-suite, and the board, by proxy, a healthy ROI within a reasonable time frame. But they’re now on the phone for a very different reason. 

One national jewellery business (in-store and online in all states) lost 31 per cent of its keyword search share and was still 32 per cent below in traffic one year on from its website migration.

An international makeup brand with 20 years of SEO and a lifetime of customer acquisition enjoyed a pre-migration ranking for 10,042 keywords, with post-migration rankings for just 2134 keywords only three months later. That’s a 78 per cent reduction in SEO keywords effectiveness. 

Locally, we’ve seen a national retailer experience the same issue, with keyword rankings down by 53 per cent in three weeks. Shout Digital is now working hard alongside them to rectify this issue. 

You’d be surprised how many iconic companies this has happened to – and if drastic traffic loss can happen to multinational brands… it can happen to you. 

However, the pain of losing traffic during a web migration can be avoided with a sound SEO strategy. It’s not an inevitable evil of upping your aesthetic and function. 

An SEO expert will define a clear strategy to help with keyword research, optimising content, managing redirects, and ensuring the new site is technically sound for all relevant search engines.

Why don’t we know about this? 

The sales success of SEO campaigns actually goes some way to explaining why there is confusion around whether SEO is a marketing or business cost and why it can get overlooked as playing a vital role in website migration. Because SEO can bring in a considerable amount of revenue, people don’t recognise the equally important hygiene role it plays in ensuring your sparkling new site is not lost in the ether. 

But if you make money via your website, you absolutely must invest in SEO when you invest in a new site. Even before you think about the money it will make you in new traffic, you can’t overlook the gaping hole that not having an SEO migration plan could create. This is why SEO should not be seen as a marketing cost, but instead a practical cost of doing business. 

And it doesn’t matter what business you’re in or how long you’ve been operating, although SEO is even more important for a new, growing business that doesn’t have a historical ranking to demonstrate credibility to Google’s algorithms. 

How much does it cost? 

The practical cost of a sound SEO strategy for web migration starts at between $3000 to $5000 – and is best accompanied by ongoing support for at least the first year. This may equate to around an extra 10 per cent in digital cost for a smaller business refreshing their website, but the spend far outweighs the risk. 

Often, builds happen behind the scenes by the time the project gets to the live stage, budgets are thin, hosting fees are about to be added, and the crucial value of SEO in a website migration can be overlooked or dismissed as unnecessary. But do this at your peril. 

Instead, take a proactive approach with a dedicated SEO partner for the switch, setting aside funds to maintain healthy SEO for at least the first year of your new website, and avoid getting caught in a web of grief. 

• Shout Digital is a specialist digital agency with expertise in SEO, paid search and social media advertising and e-commerce. Visit them at Stand 99 at Retail Fest from May 28-30 at the Gold Coast Convention Centre, or learn more at www.shoutdigital.com.au.