Nice try web agency, nice try!

We recently inherited a project from another local web agency because, according to our client, their sales have tanked ever since their new website was launched. The design and user experience isn’t great to say the least, but all of their SEO (search engine optimisation) has disappeared meaning that they cannot be found.

The previous web agency handed over the project to us and were very polite and efficient, but we believe they tried to sabotage the project, and in this article I’ll explain how.

Firstly, it’s worth noting that although the majority of local web agencies compete with each other, they are still friendly, cooperative and trust worthy. That being said, we have dealt with a nationwide company before who have deliberately sabotaged a client’s website when they moved to us.

Back to the story. The website did not only have poor SEO, it was below par, and was missing the absolute core fundamentals that you’d get by default. From an SEO perspective it was worse than a DIY-website build. The web agency has installed an SEO plugin, we can only presume thinking this would boost their position, when even the content itself was poor. That isn’t how search engine optimisation works.

Anyway, we ran a scan of our site using our software, did a manual audit, had a chat with the owners, and took them on as a client.

Our first step was to migrate the site on to our servers. So, we asked the old developer for a copy of the website which they provided in a couple of days, this was almost identical to the live version, and we’ll get back to that.

We set this up, made the website live, and ran another SEO audit, and our software couldn’t scan the pages any more. How strange!

This is where we think the other agency were being sneaky, in that, before they gave us the files, they checked a box on the (WordPress) website called “Discourage search engines from indexing this site”. It’s pretty obvious what this does, but in technical terms it adds “noindex” and “nofollow” tags asking search engines not to add these pages to their databases.

The other agency must have known they did a bad job, and hoped we wouldn’t spot there sneaky modification, and so things wouldn’t improve and we’d get the blame. Obviously we put things right, but this makes us wonder what else they could have changed. We also ditched their pointless SEO plugin.

The thing that we find funny is how pathetic this is, and how they could believe that any competent web or SEO agency would miss it.

For those of you with young kids, you’ll know that they hide under a duvet thinking that their parents can’t see them – well, this is about as ridiculous as that.

Nice try unnamed web agency, nice try.

Clowns.

We are Webbed Feet, we don’t play silly games