One of the most common SEO myths is that if you switch your website over to a new agency for hosting and maintenance, your rankings will drop and you’ll lose your hard-won “link juice” (also occasionally referred to as “SEO juice”). This is an understandable concern to have, especially after you’ve spent so much time, money, and effort into building your online presence.
Fortunately, lost link juice doesn’t have to be your fate. If you can find a marketing agency that has years of experience in website hosting and maintenance, you can rest assured that your website migration will go smoothly and not take a toll on all your SEO gains.
Defining SEO Juice
Your SEO juice (or link juice) is the authority, trustworthiness, and credibility your dental website accumulates over time through Google. This requires routine website optimization and maintenance to keep your site’s content relevant. There are many ways your marketing agency can help you do this, but their primary goal should be to continually improve your Google rankings and increase your prominence in local search.
Dispelling This SEO Myth: How to Keep Your SEO Juice and Grow Your Web Presence
A capable marketing agency with web hosting experience can help you migrate your website without losing stride.
Here are some of the keys to holding onto your SEO juice:
- Optimize your website pages regularly with proper keyword research and highly valuable keywords
- Keep your original website domain
- Redirect all links to your new website
- Check for and eliminate all inconsistencies between your various online listings (address, name, phone number, URL, etc.)—these inconsistencies CAN hurt your rankings!
How to Handle a Domain Change
For some businesses, a website domain change is necessary, but it doesn’t have to be the end of the world for your SEO. If you’re completely starting over, merging practices, or re-branding entirely, you can change domains without harming the online reputation you’ve painstakingly built. Done properly, you shouldn’t expect more than a temporary drop in traffic to your website. Once Google has taken the time it needs to crawl your new website, you should see an uptick in traffic soon after.
Things Your Marketing Agency Should Do to Prevent this SEO Myth
If your marketing agency is worth their salt, they’ll be able to make your website transfer an uneventful, straightforward process, because they’ve done it many times before. By knowing how to complete a successful website migration, your marketing agency will be able to keep the SEO myth that a website will lose its gains during this process exactly what it is: a myth.
Keep all your content the same.
The key is to ensure that all your new website content is as similar as possible to your old website content, making it easier for Google to crawl the site.
Link research.
The agency that is overseeing your migration to a new domain should be doing thorough link research to identify all the links on your website that need to be redirected.
Make 301 redirects.
Next, the agency will need to create 301 redirects to make sure people land on the right pages when they visit your website. This helps to prevent 404 errors, which can chip away at your Google rankings and put people off your website entirely. You’ve probably encountered a few 404 pages yourself when visiting different websites.
Back up all your assets.
Additionally, your agency needs to back up all your website’s content before transferring everything to the new server, just in case. This is common sense, and crucial for any website that’s built using a database-driven content management system.
Signs You’ve Found the Right Marketing Agency
Your dental website is too valuable to leave in the wrong hands. If you’re shopping around for an agency to partner with, make sure they’re able to:
Show their work
They freely offer up examples of their work to demonstrate their experience and show you what you can expect if you choose to partner with them.
Show they can get results
An agency can tell you their clients are successful, but the numbers don’t lie. They should be open to sharing real-world data with you and explaining how their work makes dental practices more successful.
Answer all your questions
Don’t be afraid to ask hardball questions to gauge an agency’s skill and integrity. A quality agency will be happy to answer your questions and address your concerns. If you’re convinced they’ll manage your website as well as they manage their own, then you’ve probably found a good fit.
Why Choose InTouch?
At InTouch, a win for our clients is a win for us. We understand how important it is for businesses to achieve success in the digital space, because it affects their success in the real world, too. Our team consists of talented, forward-thinking individuals who don’t just see cold, hard data—we see the amazing people behind the businesses we work with, who provide invaluable services to their patients.
Whether you’re planning to migrate your website or start completely from scratch, or if you have any questions about other SEO myths, we’re here to help. Call (877) 493-9003 to speak to our team or request a free digital analysis to see how we can improve your site’s performance.