Changing sites content once it ranks #1

I snoop around this offline section daily and couldn't even imagine where I'd be without it. Probably still smoking pot on the couch playing nazi zombies. Once I become successful in my offline journey, I'm going to write the sexiest free guide that has ever to hit this forum... But that's still a long way away.

I recently bought the domain (city name)lawyers.com Without doing any SEO and adding hardly an content, the site was already ranking on the second page of google. So obviously, it's a low targeted keyword.

Now that I need to actually add some content, I'm at a fork in the road of which way I should approach this. My plan is to make this a microsite for a lawyer where I live. However, I don't want to approach lawyers and propose my sales pitch without it already receiving traffic...I also have no portfolio yet so that also makes me less inclined to approach them. Instead, I want to rank this site up to #1 and then tell lawyers "Hey, I have a #1 position lawyer site that I can lease, sell, or use to get leads for you (probably going to take the leads approach).

And when this lawyer says yes, I will change all the content so that it looks as if it were their own site. This would mean changing all the example info for the few pages that I have (for example: (under the bio page) Benjamin Badass established his dominance in Colorado in 1987. blah blah blah.) to the actual info the represents the client. I will make sure the new content is more optimized than the old, but I have a strong feeling that this will hurt my ranking. Will it? And if so, will it be very easy to get it back on top again?

For those who have gone through this or something similar, what are your thoughts and what approach would you take if you were me?

Your replies are much appreciated guys. And like I said, I will give back to this community soon enough.

If you really have to go for it, just change whatever you want to change. If the site is already ranked well it means it has some link juice and authority, so adding new content will be great. Try to create a blog inside that site too, that way you can add content daily or every 2,3 days.

Good luck buddy.

Thanks for your reply Kix, I agree that a blog would be a good idea. That way those posts will never change, and yes, google loves that fresh content.

Any other thoughts on the best way to approach this? Thanks again guys.

Build it from scratch as if it were for a lawyers practise. Use a generic or fake number, business name, address and content. Not like anyone will notice until youre at the first page anyway.

If you want, buy a local number, add it to the site and send callers to a local lawyer or send them directly to voicemail. That way you capture leads before renting the site out.

How much easier would it be to sell if you could say 'my site is generating x callers per month' with confidence, rather than 'my site is number one' or 'my site gets x visitors per month'


At the end of the day, they care about calls and ultimately new clients. So in short, make the site right now as it will remain in the final version. Once a client is landed, swap out logo, address etc but the core content remains.

Once you got this down pat, scaling to more sites is super simple as you have your generic content to load in to all other sites.

Can't talk much more, 2.20am here and typing from a tablet is pretty aannoying. Hope this helps. Sorry for typos.

If you really have to change it then change it. However, it's going to drastically effect your individual-page ranking since the content would be different, the ranking factors would be different, the keyword densities would be different...the list goes on..

I have something similar within a health niche.
Now that it's ranked #1 for nearly all related keywords - I am going to approach clinics about partnering/sponsoring.
My site doesn't use a city in the title, so I plan to re-use it for any city worth the effort output to get a clinic as a client.

I am using two WP plugins to manage. One is WPTT which has many handy features, where I will use geo-targeted redirection.
The second is Landing Pages. So I am basically duplicating the content of my well ranked pages, and using the redirection profile to re-direct visitors (human only, spiders don't get re-directed) to point to the appropriate landing page for that city.

This way I hope to keep ranking but have custom content for sponsors.

krzysiekz said:

Build it from scratch as if it were for a lawyers practise. Use a generic or fake number, business name, address and content. Not like anyone will notice until youre at the first page anyway.

If you want, buy a local number, add it to the site and send callers to a local lawyer or send them directly to voicemail. That way you capture leads before renting the site out.

How much easier would it be to sell if you could say 'my site is generating x callers per month' with confidence, rather than 'my site is number one' or 'my site gets x visitors per month'


At the end of the day, they care about calls and ultimately new clients. So in short, make the site right now as it will remain in the final version. Once a client is landed, swap out logo, address etc but the core content remains.

Once you got this down pat, scaling to more sites is super simple as you have your generic content to load in to all other sites.

Can't talk much more, 2.20am here and typing from a tablet is pretty aannoying. Hope this helps. Sorry for typos.

Click to expand...

This is great advice. I am going to follow it. On my home page I will write the out a very general welcome article that does not need any additional information once I land the client (except name of lawyer) so that ranking for the home page will not likely change.

But for the other pages such as the "Practice Areas" and "bio" page, I will add generic info, but once I land a client, the content here will indeed have to change greatly. But I guess if I can keep the home page content the same, then my rankings most likely wont be affected for that particular page which will be good enough for now.

Thank you my friend. And props for writing all that on a tablet.

Still on a tablet at the moment, but I'll chime in a bit more.

You said you will make a welcome article on the home page. I am not sure what you mean by this, but in my opinion you definitely don't want anything that resembles the format of an article on the home page. We are talking about a local business here, and so our content needs to be in line with what someone expects to see when they land on the website.

When they land on the website, they probably expect to see a photo about your practice, a logo, some information about your practice, what you specialize in if anything, your contact information and maybe a contact form on home page to capture leads immediately.

If you slam on a 400 word article on there and think you're going to see good conversions, you will be disappointed. You need to mimic what other successful local businesses do, and they definitely do not post a big chunky article on the home page.

I am not saying not to have 400 words of content on the home page. I just mean, have it formatted and segmented like a real business.

That's enough rambling about that.

To make this easily scalable, find a good theme and learn it inside out. Then continue to use this theme for all of your rental sites. Thatrs what I did and it makes creating new sites quick. On top of that, because I've optimized the sites, when I copy the site over to a new installation, I've already got a fairly optimized website.

I was seeing around 30% of website visitors turn in to callers. Maybe 5% or a bit less were drilling out the contact form. I was working with dentists, your results may vary.