If Your Page Ranks Well, You'd Better Be Messing With It

One of my favorite Canadians in search (there's so many, don't make me choose!), Andrew Goodman, pointed me to a post by Jamie Roche of iMedia Connection - A ReDesign Worthy of Google De-listing. Mr Roche (who works with the supafly Jon Mendez if I'm not mistaken) had some good advice, sadly shrouded in long-past SEO mythology that deserves clearing up. Roche says there is "common knowledge" in the SEO sphere espoused by "an endless number of third parties," by which, I assume he means us. This includes:

1. That the appearance and placement of key words or phrases on your page can increase ranking
2. That the number and quality of sites that link to your site, especially when the link includes your key word or phrase, might be the most important factor
3. That there is special magic that SEO firms know, including submitting the site or pages to indexes, as well as setting up meta-tags, image tags and other hidden stuff on the page to get the spiders to connect your page with your key words or phrases
4. And perhaps the most ubiquitous belief is that, if your page ranks well, don't mess with it.

Say what?

Who are these mystical parties feeding you such obvious crud. I grant that numbers 1 and 2 are generally valid, accurate and should be presented by any SEO worth his or her salt. However, Mr. Roche, you've got a little explaining to do about #3.

The "special magic" that we know is similar to the "special magic" that you, as a conversion rate expert, know. Let me give you some examples:

• Branding in the search results can bring returns in CTR
• There are site architecture issues that can cause search ranking and inclusion problems
• It's wise to follow the rules when crafting URLs
• If you're not careful, the engines will ruin your smartly crafted copy
• Search engines are very smart about interpreting links
• We can improve your blog traffic
• Lunar cycles and ocean currents have something to do with SEO afterall
• When I run into tough questions, folks smarter than I have the answers

Needless to say, the hidden tags and top secret submissions are a thing of the far past - remember when conversion consulting was all about how to sell more chickens at the farmer's market? Same thing here.

The myth I most want to tackle, though, is this one - "if your page ranks well, don't mess with it." I'm fearful that Mr. Roche may actually be correct here - there seems to be a contigent of SEOs and clients of SEOs (or maybe just clients of mine) who believe that once a page is ranking, it's sacreligious to mess with it. This is a complete falsehood.

Today's search engine rankings are primarily centered around a few elements:

• Strength of the domain (measured by links, trust, age, and possibly some usage factors)
• Internal and external links to the page
• Keyword in the title tag

Those are the big three. If you're hitting on all cylinders with these, you're 80-90% of the way to being as optimized as you can be. Thus, the changes a conversion rate expert might make, which are nearly universally on-page changes - where content goes, what headlines say, how graphics display, how embedded content or animations or javascript might function, are all 100% kosher to test to your heart's delight. We've done it dozens of times, and generally, when you increase conversion rates and make a better page for users, you gain rankings. The only place that conversion rate consultants may venture that could potentially hurt you is if they recommend that you make your content un-indexable (i.e. put in in Flash) or change your title tag (so that you're no longer targeting the keywords that bring you traffic. Barring those mistakes, I highly endorse working with successful conversion booster guys like Jamie & Jon.

Let's use a fun illustration to see what our friendly Google monster thinks of the situation:

Instead of worrying about preserving your rankings by never touching your "optimized" page, you should be attempting to improve that page as much as possible, to get the most you can out of your search visitors (for those who remember, this was my most overlooked strategy in SEO). You can hire a firm like Jamie's, or go out on your own and starting testing placement of conversion funnels, images, buttons, new text, headlines, the works!

I'm not suggesting that you can be reckless with changes to a page, but in general, we've seen complete overhauls of text content, images, embedded items and headlines without any trouble in the rankings. Preserve title tag targeting, link structure, some instances of your keyword on the page and general accessibility and you'll be safe from harm. What a happy note to sleep on.

p.s. No offense to Jamie in here; I'm actually very appreciative for the blog topic.