When a Website Designer’s Good Intentions Go Bad

Today I am meeting with a client to review the design and build of his new website.  Quite frankly I’m not looking forward to this meeting.  I am the barrier of bad news.

When I originally accepted this project, I could see Google had indexed about 1,000 pages within his domain.  While it would take some time to migrate and optimize this many pages, I was up for the challenge.  The goal is to give him a more SEO friendly site that he can maintain himself in WordPress. If that meant throwing in some plugins and optimizing 1,000 pages, so be it.

Last week I reviewed his Google Analytics reports, dug deeper into his content pages, and investigated his existing website’s structure.  Through Google Analytics I could see he didn’t have 1,000 pages, he had about 10,000 pages.  Why were they not showing up in Google’s index?  Well I figured this out a bit later as I reviewed page by page content on his existing website.  Of these 10,000 pages, about 3,000 or so are the exact same pages.  Okay, three different pages, but applied to 1,000 different products.  You may be asking yourself so what and thinking I am a drama queen.  To me, the drama queen, all I saw was a big red flag waving with a large Google logo hovering overheard.  This was trouble with a capital T.

These 3,000 plus pages represent duplicate content to Google.  Why would Google cloud their index with 3,000 pages of the exact same content?  Google won’t do it.  It would simply corrode the overall search results, which would frustrate Google users, so Google is not going to do it.  Google will also most likely penalize the overall site for this mass amount of duplicated content.

I have already told my client I will not migrate this duplicate content.  The SEO consultant in me cannot do it, because I know it is wrong.  The website designer in me won’t do it, because I know it will degrade the user experience as well.  So I get to now explain this to my client and hope he understands that my intentions are good.

Now I will return to his website, his Google Analytics reports, and to the broken sitemaps to see what else lurks beneath the covers of this existing website.  I believe my 3,000 pages of duplicate content is only the tip of the iceberg and I am afraid the Titanic is getting ready to go down.

State of the Index Presentation is a Great Read

At last week’s PubCon conference in Las Vegas, Matt Cutts gave a presentation on Google and recent Google advancements.  This is a good read for website developers, in-house webmasters, and SEO consultants.  From Social Search to Pagetest to Google Web Toolkit, Matt gives a number of good takeaways.

State of the Index

Popularity Contests Take It to the Next Level With Social Media

We are all familiar with the popularity contests of high school.  The idea of becoming homecoming queen or the student council president scared me as a teen, as neither were my thing.  I was more quiet and into other pursuits.  What is funny is now, some twenty years later, I find myself in Internet marketing and social media.  What is even funnier is the fact that I didn’t gasp at the idea of Mashable’s Open Web Awards Social Media Edition popularity contest.  Instead, I’d love to be nominated or win.  What the heck happened to me?

Maybe I grew up or morphed into someone else.  I can say my fellow high school classmates saw a new me at our twentieth class reunion.  I was more outgoing, hugged everyone, and was much more “out there” than I ever was back in school.  I think a major part of this is due to my profession and my persona on the Internet.

I developed this persona back in my ERP software days and have continued it now that I run my own Internet marketing company.  A few years ago someone who knew me through my blog approached me at a conference.  While this didn’t alarm me then, it does now.  Again, didn’t want to be the queen of high school, so why do I have this urge to be the bell of the Internet?  Technology.  I love it and cannot get enough of it.

I love technology so much that the idea of a popularity contest intrigues me and does not haunt me.  I even voted for @puremichigan and @shitmydadsays as the best social media campaign and funniest tweets.  So I have changed and I think for the better.  The Internet has blessed me in many ways and I think this very personal change is just an example of why I’m attached to my Mac and my wi-fi.