Design changes overwriting SEO

Hi guys,

I work in a large and fast-paced web department, with many websites, designers, and deadlines. As a result, my SEO changes are often overwritten. I am also guessing that this experience speaks to several others in this forum, and I am curious as to how others have dealt with this.

Personally I am considering purchasing software that will tell me when homepage changes are made. I realize it's preferable to stay ahead of the curve but at times this seems next to impossible given that there is no set schedule for homepage changes.

How have you guys dealt with similar situations?

I dont know if I am understading the questions but are you asking when is the best time to change your home page?

If that is the question, I would say testing one variable at a time is the best way to go about that. I don't know if I would trust a software for that. Marketing Rule of thumb is, constantly improve. Quality management will tell you this as well, so change one variable at a time and test it. If you change more than that at a time you can't measure the effectiveness of your change.

Anyways, I hope that was your question or I just wasted someones time!

I've had this happen before.

The way I went about was to send an email out to anyone who would be able to make changes that could override your work and explain to them why certain things are the way they are so they understand.

Organizational skills and Documentation of Data is very important here. When there are alterations, make sure it is properly documented either by email or official report. And result of these changes should be documented also (such as ranking report for example)

Analyzing complex problems in a big environment such as this would be very difficult. A team of brilliant web geeks cannot solved a problem if there is no data to analyze.

Therefore, only when data is well kept in the files can make the departments jobs very efficient. A simple Excel tasking spreadsheet (or Google docs online) , office Email software and organized naming of windows folders can most likely solve this problem (also a lot of disk space if you need to)..without buying any expensive softwares.

Emerson's right. No matter what kind of fancy software you own, it's going to be impossible to keep the cogs turning unless your whole company is properly coordinated. What's the point of being in a soccer team if each player's going to do his own thing?

Thank you guys, your responses were very helpful. Sorry if my post was more of a rant than a direct question but your responses certainly helped. I suppose it will come down to better organization (time to open up the Excel!) and documentation of these changes.

We have each website on its own computer.

i had the same problem while i was managing seo dept. it was designers, copywriters, programmers and more that screwed up everyday something new.
the best that you can do is

- give everyone basic seo lessons about content and links structures.
- try to limit the number of employees who have permission to change pages.
- try to define higher permission pages, like home pages or lending pages that you promoting at the organic results.
- you can always invest more time in other seo actions, like external links.

1) Visual Source Safe... or Check In Check Out file management.

2) Make it manditory procedure that everyone downloads most recent copy before making changes (including you)

3) Send out a notice to those with access when you have made changes, if they too are working on those same files, ask them to please make the new adjustments.

totally right, it will you and every one else to do things better and also understand the importance of it for SEO.