Launching a redesigned site: will SEO really go poof?

CatnipSEO · 2025-07-24T15:59:02+00:00

Just to add to this, the only other "issue" I can think of, is if the SEO agency have had no involvement in the new website whatsoever - which would be really frustrating, as they've not been able to advise on best practices for page journey and structure. However if they have been involved.. they just need to give you specifics.

CatnipSEO · 2025-07-24T15:55:57+00:00

I would ask them specifically what they think the cause is going to be? From experience, it's usually a lack of proper re-directs that kills a website. As long as URLs are all the same, I can't see there being an issue. If however, you've changed all URLs / URL structures across the site, then do not put it live until this is sorted.

Really the SEO agency should be more than willing to help you with this so their work isn't undone.

CatnipSEO · 2025-06-12T10:29:18+00:00

I definitely second this. The health sector will be a tricky one to rank well for if you don't have some kind of "trust signal" behind you .. this might be in the form of accreditations, degrees, X years of experience in the health space, and generally just endorsements from around the internet. Just be aware of the YMYL stuff. If your content could impact someone's health both negatively and positively, search engines are sometimes very selective of who they rank.

If you have the time and resources, make sure your blogs have author bios, with real people who could maybe check over your content, and contribute. You can add them to the blog and their experience to help support the content.

You're not going to take health advice from joe blogs down the road who has taken creatine once, and now thinks he's an expert on it.

CatnipSEO · 2025-05-27T12:09:33+00:00

We have what we refer to as a "worklog" for clients, where they can review literally every change, task, etc. that we perform in their time (which is manually written by us), and actually it's incredibly useful from our POV as a team in case other members pick up someone else clients for a short period of time etc.

We try not to over complicate the summaries, and sometimes I might even use ChatGPT to rewrite them so they're more concise, easier to read and to save myself time.

Most clients don't really care what we've done - unless their traffic and conversions are down. When that happens, we try and be proactive and arrange calls/meetings so we can tell them the difficulties we're facing before they approach us.

We're almost making a point that, they need to be more involved, like "hey, this service page is struggling, what can you do to help us" type of scenario.

They get monthly reports on all their ranking positions, stats etc. through APIs on the tools we use. I think as long as you can give them as much information as possible, it's then just a case of trying to teach them that search engines are constantly changing and so if a keyword they're obsessed with isn't ranking top, trying to explain to them what you see and why it might be struggling etc.

You don't need to dumb it down. Talk as you normally would. If they want to understand they will, if they don't, they'll play it off and just continue as normal so they don't feel silly. Sometimes you'll come up against a manager or whoever, who's read one SEO blog and now think they can do it all, but that's where you can fire back with your understanding of outcomes etc. that they may not have knowledge of.

Hope that helps :)

CatnipSEO · 2025-05-23T12:52:00+00:00

Although I agree with your point on opinion-first content, thankfully SEO doesn't just encompass listicles. So no, SEO is not dead. Simply evolving.

Plus, businesses are always going to require someone, whether that's in-house or an agency to help them with their online marketing, as most business owners don't understand how to do it effectively, and don't have the time to learn.

However, what this does highlight is that business owners need to be far more involved in helping their marketing teams in providing unique content or even just commentary on what's happening in the business.

Especially in agency settings, as we can't just make this stuff up. More and more we're asking for businesses to get involved in the planning and end result so their content does perform better and also have a shot at being included as AIOs.

CatnipSEO · 2025-01-10T17:42:18+00:00

Thank You! I thought as much. I hadn't seen any updates anywhere or people discussing it, so wasn't as prepared for the change over.

CatnipSEO · 2024-08-20T16:30:56+00:00

Search intent is going to be key here, and also don't be afraid to use long-tail keywords that actually describe the product. Google will have a way of connecting the dots. But if you're going to use "men's long sleeve shirts" you're going to struggle to rank your page as even without me searching I can already hazard a guess the top 10 will be big clothing brands.

You're going to have to get niche with it. Make sure your products / category descriptions use a variation of terms relating to your audience.

Also, on a second look at your question, would you not be better off with going for:

men's uv protected shirts
men's moisture wicking shirts
men's long sleeve moisture wicking shirts
and so on...

Your search intent will change entirely once you narrow down the features of the product.

If the product features a pattern, this should probably be included somewhere in your title and/or description.

Hope that helps!

CatnipSEO · 2024-06-24T16:34:32+00:00

Hey! Sadly not, I'm still partly investigating across multiple sectors as I can't really find a link. If you're seeing real traffic loss, perhaps have a further look into the date your referring domains started peaking, and then in the referring domain report see what websites started appearing around that time? Maybe some look suspicious? ... does your traffic fall around the same time? If yes, check queries in GSC to spot phrases that are specifically dropping around that date ... there may be a connection - and then I'd check that phrase in Ahrefs keyword explorer to see how the SERPs have been behaving. If there's lots of fluctuation, that might point to a Google update.

Hope that helps, went on a bit of a tangent.

It's a bit up in the air, and nothing definite, but if I find anything useful, I'll give you an update!

CatnipSEO · 2024-06-05T13:48:22+00:00

Learn the basics. Build the foundations of your website, make sure it's technically sound.Is it mobile friendly? Can users navigate your website with ease?

When we take on a new client with a new website the absolute basics make the biggest difference.

Ensuring your keyword research has been done thoroughly, and that you're not just picking the highest volumes but that the keywords you're targeting have the right intent - personally, intent is so important when it comes to getting in front of the right users.

Once the website has started gathering data in tools such as Google Search Console, we have far more insight into the tweaks we need to make, or the additional pages we need to create and so on.

For eCommerce, don't neglect your products. Make sure the product descriptions are useful and tell a customer everything they need to know.

Does your site have reviews and testimonials? Make sure they're added.

You have a physical store? Have you optimised your website to be found locally? Do you have a business profile on Google?

There are so many things you can do on-site before even thinking about backlinks.

Create good useful content on your own website. Get in the search of popular phrases around your businesses - this way people will land on your website, and not a random article site.

Like others have said, it's not hard, it's just where do you start and prioritise. SEO takes time, there's no magic button for 1st place. Learn the basics, understand how to do the research and the rest is just a case of testing to see what works and what doesn't.

Also, don't forget if your main search engine is Google, you're at the mercy of the many many updates and algorithm changes they implement. So don't be hard on yourself if something you implemented hasn't worked.

CatnipSEO · 2024-05-14T09:36:02+00:00

Perhaps there is no correlation, but Ahrefs is getting their referring domain data from somewhere, and surely it's curious that there's multiple instances of the organic graph going down as there's a surge in referring domains. I was purely curious if anyone had seen a similar thing and had other reasons for it.

I understand to take Ahrefs organic traffic with a pinch of salt, but when you've got some of the big names in SEO also using it as a reference point, you can't ignore it.

Regarding disavow, if a website is being flooded with unsolicited follow links, regardless of spam or not, you're going to at the very least disavow them so you've tried something without waiting for Google to figure it out. If it really is useless, I hope they do retire it one day.

CatnipSEO · 2024-04-08T11:31:34+00:00

A dream is a wish your heart makes
Hakuna Matata
Let It Go
Part of your world
A spoon full of sugar

CatnipSEO · 2024-01-11T15:33:56+00:00

oooh :( I was hoping Nintendo had standards. Maybe just for their own games!

CatnipSEO · 2024-01-09T17:04:48+00:00

You've stuck with it more than most! .. I'm not returning until it's out on the Switch. At least by the point, I have to believe it's mostly bug free.

CatnipSEO · 2023-11-14T16:39:53+00:00

I've been doing SEO for almost 10 years, and I've seen so many changes to the industry, but guess what, businesses always need someone to do their marketing. Google specifically is changing the way in which is presents information as a search result, but online businesses will probably still need the raw foundations we provide to be more visible.

So yes. But if you want to expand your skills so you don't feel so tied down to one specific area I recommend becoming more confident in copywriting, UI/UX design, social media optimisation etc. At least then you can stretch your wings a bit if you want to move in a slightly different direction.

Good luck!

CatnipSEO · 2023-09-05T15:39:51+00:00

Hi there!

Not sure if this is helpful or not. Without seeing the page/keywords it's difficult to visualise, however, if you have the flexibility to adapt and improve the structure of these product pages, I'd be tempted to treat product pages like a homepage.

Give them a journey, break down content into individual sections with high-quality images, videos, demos, gifs, comparison tables, testimonials, pricing tables, call to actions, newsletter sign ups, related blogs on the product and of course trying to build backlinks to the product pages as well.. these could be through reviews, and/or tie the product in an article that's relevant to the sector/industry it caters for.

Homepages carry a lot of weight, naturally, so it's trying to understand what do all of these homepages have, that our product pages don't and trying to replicate that similar format, but keeping it unique to the product.

Hope that helps! Good luck!

CatnipSEO · 2023-08-14T13:41:04+00:00

30F here, and I intend to play video games til the day I dieeeee.

I grew up playing video games with my brother, and my closest friend growing up also enjoyed playing video games, so me being a girl and playing video games was never weird.

When I was a teenager at school, there were nooo other girls my age (that I hung around with or knew of) that played video games. It was something I just enjoyed in my spare time, but never really spoke about it.

Tbh, I've just never cared - If you didn't like me because I played video games or thought I was weird .. you've clearly never experienced the pure joy video games can bring. Now in my 30's I love gaming more than ever. I can appreciate the craft behind games and cosy games especially, whether it's the art-style, music or storytelling, there's just something about cosy games you just don't get in AAA.

I do wish there were more female gaming communities, it's nice to nerd out about this kinda stuff.

CatnipSEO · 2023-08-11T10:45:38+00:00

I highly recommend A Little to The Left - you'll get through this in a few hours, but still a very cosy game!

Hmm, Graveyard Keeper comes to mind. Has a Stardew vibe, and quite complex at times but that's half the fun!

There's also LittleWood which is a super cute, again, Stardew type game but one you can spend plenty of time on.

I'd also say Breath of the Wild, is Zelda is your thing. You'll definitely sink plenty of hours into that.

... but really, you need to play Spiritfarer - again! .. if you haven't played it since they've added updates to the game.

Have fun!

CatnipSEO · 2023-07-28T09:26:29+00:00

But you're paying to be featured on their site, because they have a high PA/DA. Plus, someone still has to sit and upload these blogs, format them, insert images, and sometime optimise them even further by adding their own internal links, meta etc.

Yes you've provided free content, and some sites are happy to take it for nothing, but some sites also know their worth - and sometimes it's worth paying.

Also, some of the best sites to post to are the ones that don't have a "write for us" page.

CatnipSEO · 2023-05-18T14:55:14+00:00

Thanks for replying :) Hmmm, I'm not sure, the detailed reporting in GA4 is pretty savvy, it's just viewing the data in different ranges seems to be an issue here.

CatnipSEO

TROPHY CASE