How much does site traffic effect google ranking?

Hi all!

I recently bought a business which is set up really well but desperately needs re-branding as the website and overall branding looks like it was designed in 1995.



The current (godaddy) site is actually generating work and is on the first page of google results for some relevant search terms. It just could be doing heaps better if it didn’t look so terrible.



So, I’ve built a new website with squarespace which looks far superior. I believe it will eventually generate lots more work if I can get it to rank as well as the old site.



So my problem is how to nudge the new site up the ranks without damaging the business that the old site is bringing in until its ready to be replaced.



The previous owner was of the opinion that traffic to the site was an important factor in google ranking… Is this true?



The old site gets a bunch of traffic from other businesses and I want them to switch over to the new site. But I’m worried that if I do this the old site will drop off, and if the new site fails to rank, I will just end up with a lot less business…



So is it wise or unwise to get all external referring businesses to change over to the new site at this stage?



The other thing I wonder about is whether google might penalise a business for having two seperate sites for the same business competing for the top spots?







Any advice greatly appreciated!

 

That is not correct, traffic has no impact on ranking..

You will get varied opinions on this, but I have often had two sites for one business. You must keep them separate though. If you have a lot links back and forth between the sites and shared page content, at some point Google will treat the two sites as one. I always have the sites vying for different keywords.

But it will take a long time to develop the keyword reach on a completely new site and domain, in comparison to an aged and well ranked one....unless you redirect the old site to the new one. At that point of course, the old sites stops existing and all link juice (if done correctly) is transferred to the new domain. If the new site pages have good content that is relevant to your old pages, you should be able to keep or even improve your ranking.

Always remember when undertaking such a project, if the ranking crashes, reverse all changes that were made.

 

Thanks so much, thats great advice!

So, if I were to do this but then had to reverse all changes due to a ranking crash, what are the chances that I could get the old site back to where it was? Is reversing changes usually successful like that or is there a decent chance that by messing with a ranking site I won't be able to get it back to where it was regardless of how perfectly I reverse things...?

I'm really worried that if i mess with the old site I'm going to end up with two non-ranking sites and this would really hurt our business...

If reversing changes usually works thats great news as I can try it out without risking too much!

Thanks again!

 

I am not sure if I am for having two sites that will be sharing much of the same content. I'd stick to one site. From my experience every time I made a significant site design update it would initially negatively impact my traffic. You should not start panicking if and when it happens. It may take a couple weeks before your traffic goes back to where it used to be. The opposite can happen too. You can have a spike in traffic.

Ultimately, do what you believe is right for you. We can give you all kind of advice, but if your gut tells you otherwise - follow your instincts.

 

Just so I'm sure I understand...

In this scenario I would 301 redirect the old site's URL (Site A) to the new site (Site B).

This would then mean that Site A basically ceases to exist on the internet and Site B now has two URLs. Wouldn't Site A's URL then drop down to the same ranking as Site B as they would now both be ranked based on the same content (site B).

How would doing this boost up Site B's ranking if traffic doesn't effect ranking?

Also, just to clarify, we do get a bit of business from having our link on other business's sites but its certainly not heaps of traffic compared to most internet based businesses.

So would that small amount of "link juice" be enough for your suggestion to work? Or is that more for sites that are linked on heaps of pages with heaps of click throughs & traffic?

 

Thanks Qwikad! Yes I definitely don't want two sites but my problem is that if I get rid of the old site without knowing whether the new one will compete in rankings, I might seriously damage our business. So I sort of need to have both up until I can be sure that the new site will rank (then remove the old one).

Ideally I would have just gradually altered the one site until I was happy with it but it was unfortunately made with a platform (GoDaddy) that I found very difficult to work with so I had to use a different platform (Squarespace).

 

Amount of traffic is not a ranking metric in Google but the quality engagements to your site with your target users will be more considerable for good signals to Google.

 

You don't really have enough SEO knowledge to be confident of getting positive results, and you can't learn enough in a few blog posts.

But you might Google 'link juice', and learn how that works and it's effects on ranking. You would not want to just redirect the main domain. You need to go into every internal page that has links pointing to it (or that is ranking well) and redirect those pages to similar pages on the new site.

Again, the old site stops existing. That domain will no longer show up in SERPs after the 301, but this can take a few weeks.

I have done this several times and never lost any position in ranking, and usually even get an improvement in SERPs.

But keep a backup plan to reverse all changes if things go bad, the ranking crashes and does not bounce back. You have a lot of the line here. If nervous about it, hire a professional.

 

If you have good traffic, that means that you have good ranking. If not then other logical question would be: what are the traffic sources then? Where from you are getting traffic?
Other question is relevance. You mentored that you started your new business and how that is relevant to old one. I mean visitors go to the site in hopes to see toys (for example) and get to new web site selling hardware (for example) in this case even huge traffic you have could be wasted.

 

Do you mean you have two websites? The one which you bought ( let it call B) and the other which you developed on Squarespace( Let's call it S).

I recommend that you re-design the website which you bought( B) on a test domain ( don't let the search engines crawl it) , keep it fast for mobile, implement all on page SEO factors, keep the URLs same and when you feel that you are 100% ready, you can replace it with the old website and then start adding more pages, getting more links.

The ranking might go down temporarily but It will come back and instead of diverting your energy on on Sqaurespace website ( S) focus your energy on the old one( B). A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush and your little effort on ( B) will bring amplified results , just like liitle efforts in a rolling stone can push it faster but it needs lots of energy to move a static rock.

When you generate a lot of money from the old one( B) you can put a team to optimize the new one ( S) which you like due to design.

Besides, life is all about challenging the status quo. Don't be afraid to challenge the existing limitations of the old website ( B) and believe that you need to make the website which you bought generate 10 time more money than now and work on it.to achieve it.
Focused efforts are better than scattered one. See case studies of great businesses, they are focused. Don'you think MacDonald can start a full service restaurant but they do only a small set of products. Coca cola can do thousands of things with billions of dollars in their pocket but they focus on few products. I can cite hundreds of examples.