This has been a long time coming.
Truth be told, I didn’t expect GreensboroSEOPro.com to shoot to the top of Google so fast.
I launched this site tentatively in 2015. It was half-finished with fairly shallow content.
But clearly it was enough.
My website was mobile-optimized for Google but not for users. I had lots of duplicate content. I had a really crappy video embedded on most pages (still is, at the time of this writing). I had a few shallow posts. I created local citations and did some social SEO. I added a few minor ninja tricks.
60 days later, I owned “Greensboro seo expert” and similar searches. It took another month or two to matriculate to the number one for “Greensboro SEO.” I also ended up with first page rankings across North Carolina.
I got enough business from it that I never made it a real priority again.
Eventually I added some basic schema markup. I also changed my logo and updated it across all social platforms and citation sources. And I am often added to independent review sites.
Other than that, Greensboro SEO Pro has never needed much more SEO work.
That should let you know something about our competition.
The New Look GSP
The first versions of GSP.com were really personal.
I told the story of how I started my work from home journey and found SEO.
I used this photo of my boys for the cover image on my About page:
Eventually, I tried to clean that up. I added members of my team and a mission statement.
In this rebuild, we’re laying a legitimate foundation.
- We updated the Home, About, and Contact Us pages.
- We’ve turned the Discovery Page into a Free SEO Audit page.
- We’ve added a What We Do, Team, Zach Bradshaw, and Pricing page.
- We’ve improved our color palette, graphics, and overall design.
- We’ve updated our tracking, analytics, and related services.
- We’ve improved security, performance, and other technical factors.
- I wrote a Manifesto.
These changes are accompanied by others as well. We are honing down our backend processes and organization. We also have some off-page and technical SEO to do for the GSP brand.
All of these things will be done over time though.
Most else comes secondary to several more basic updates.
Work Still to Do
We relaunched this site last night despite several clear errors.
We are going to simultaneously resolve these errors and monitor how Google reacts to our changes.
Where we are now, it makes more sense to go ahead and ship the site as is instead of waiting until it is perfect.
As you can see, “perfection” is a long way off.
We still need to:
- Resolve broken links across several pages.
- Test usability across all devices.
- Complete pages like our GSP 2015 case study.
- Update our NC location pages to the new look.
- Triple check graphics, margins, fonts, etc.
- Finish our footer, FAQ, and other site elements.
- SEO optimize our new pages.
We also have other things to add:
- “Our Story” and several other branding pages.
- Several case studies across different industries
- New pages for web design and other services.
- Pages targeting specific industries.
- Supporting content to dominate NC cities.
- Various how to guides for the SEO industry.
2019 is going to be a busy year.
We will lay the foundations for a top-tier agency.
Main Objective
So what’s the point?
We plan to set ourselves up for 2020, 2030, and beyond.
Obviously, most websites should be redesigned every few years. The Internet moves fast. Sometimes, your website can look old after six months.
The original GSP looked old from day one.
Still, Google loved it.
They gave us the nod for North Carolina’s best SEO Expert quickly. They also put us head and shoulders above of Greensboro’s other SEO consultants and agencies in search results.
Now we want a site that users love as well. We also want a site that builds authority in the industry.
The main goals are to rank better and convert better.
In doing so, we plan to set ourselves up for a solid decade or two.
Additional Objectives
Below the surface:
There are a few other reasons to launch a half-complete website redesign.
Create Urgency
I struggle with perfectionism.
I have so many pages and posts that I want to add.
Too often, I get them to 95% and move to the next one.
No longer. I’m actually letting my team help with my site. And I’m just going to “ship” it.
From there, I will rely on that same perfectionist nature to keep it high on the priority list.
After all, some of these pages are ridiculously incomplete. We need to run many tests.
And it’s ALREADY LIVE!
I’m freaking out already.
😁😅😱
Test & Learn
GSP.com ranked too quickly.
I thought I had more time to set up my tracking and testing.
I missed testing and tracking opportunities.
By launching our redesign half-baked, we are hoping to force some of our search rankings down. That way, we can train, test, and track on the way back up.
It would be risky. But we’re the best. And I myself could power us back to the top with my impending personal content explosion alone.
This will be a fun next couple of months as we finally start to apply our best strategies to our own SEO.
Document
We’ll make as much training out of this as possible.
It will be great for our internal protocols.
But for the first time, I’ll also start to release SEO training videos on YouTube. At GSP, we try to stay on the cutting edge of the industry. We’ve identified many gaps in the online training of others.
We’ll be excited to contribute our voice to the conversation.
We relish the opportunity to learn and teach.
Set Up Other Brands
To a certain degree, GSP is a stepping stone.
It’s intermingled with my own personal brand a bit. It’s also clearly tied to a location (Greensboro, NC) and a specific Internet marketing niche (SEO). Eventually, we’re going to outgrow it. We already offer more than just SEO and most of our clients are not even in the state. A solid 10-20% aren’t even in the United States.
I have other brands in development already.
ZachBradshaw.com is my personal blog.
Know It All Copywriting will be a premium copywriting service.
Local Wildfire will be an enterprise marketing and sales brand/agency.
Work From Home Junkie will be an online business education portal.
There’s more. But that’s enough for now.
The important thing is that I am letting Google know about them early. Yes, getting them into the minds of users is great. But with search engines, it’s almost cheating. Linking to these currently shallow brands is bad for GSP. But we can afford it.
Sacrifice the short term in pursuit of the best possible long term.
Oh wow, that sounds like a great way to end any SEO post.
So, until next time…
Thanks for reading!