Simple Solutions Are Often the Best
Posted On: 2009-08-10
Ah the joys of moving house! Packing and more packing, boxes and cartons piled high throughout the house, aching backs, myriads of details to organize and doing it all while still working and keeping the customers satisfied.
On the upside there the things we found that we didn't know we had, the things we've found that we thought we had lost and decisions to be made about what to do with all that junk we were keeping because we thought it might come in handy one day.
Oh and of course there are the cartons and cartons of business records that we haven't unpacked since the last move four years ago but we have to keep for tax purposes and because there's all that content still online.
Yes that's life in the fast lane for Steve and me at the moment and it's probably going to go on till next Monday when we actually make the move. How far are we moving? Something less than a mile as the crow flies ... it's the short moves that are the worst moves!
But I'm not going to dwell on all of that - the boxes are all behind me as I sit here facing the computer monitor so I'm going to pretend that they don't exist and all I have to do is write this column. And I can do that ... until I turn around and see that mess.
Keeping records is a smart idea
I know that some of you are probably wondering why on earth we're keeping all those business records. After all, we work online, we supposedly live in a paperless society and we can keep our records on our computers or even up there in the clouds. And of course we could ... for most of them ... but what happens when someone wants to see those records and the clouds are 404'ing?
Even if you're only running websites it's still a good idea to keep some very basic records about them. A diary where you can make a note of when you upload images, files etc. or make changes is a great idea because one day you just may need to know what you did to a file and why you did it.
A couple of weeks ago Steve was approached by a new client who wanted some professional search engine optimization services for a site that contains around 600 pages. It's not a big site by any means but it sure looks big when you have no idea of how the site has evolved over the years it's been online.
To make matters worse the site is run using a very basic content management system that's not very friendly to use and definitely not search engine friendly. Before Steve was approached an absolute amateur had been fiddling with the site and the site hadn't been ranking very well in Google although it did have a couple of reasonable positions for several terms.
Steve made a couple of suggestions about some minor alterations just to get things moving and suddenly the site seemed to drop right out of Google all together. After some moments of heart palpitations Steve took a deep breath and did some investigating to see what had been done to cause such a dramatic drop. Now we basically think that the site got caught up in the latest changes that Google has made to its algorithm ... changes that began back in early June but didn't impact on all verticals at the same time ... changes that Google is still fiddling with.
Steve also wanted to know what changes had been made to the site in the period before the client had come to us just in case there was something that had been done then had upset Google. Sadly the client had no idea about what changes had been made and the person who made the changes couldn't remember what he had done and there was no way to check because no one had bothered to keep any records.
Google's algorithm is not set in stone and nor is Bing's so changes can occur at any time and they can have a major impact on your site. Sometimes there won't be a change in the algorithm, Google just won't like something you've done but it will take a little while for Google to drop your site down the rankings.
Without a written record ... even just a few notes scrawled in a diary ... it can be almost impossible to remember what you have done to one particular site if you also happen to be running a whole bunch of other sites. It only takes a few moments to jot those changes down but it can save you hours and hours of wasted effort trying to find what has caused your drop in the rankings.
It's a very simple solution to what can become a major problem sometime in the future.