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FIDO – a Canadian GSM carrier – just rebranded. The old logo was pretty ok, the new one is not bad also:

Old FIDO logo

New FIDO Logo

The new brand looks better. They also lowered the minimum monthly plans, which is even better than re-branding. The website is now much cleaner and usable that the old one.

So, what they did wrong? It is how they handled the new website implementation.

The old page (which by the way is still accessible for public at http://v3.fido.ca/portal/home/homepage.jsp?lang=en) :

Old Home Page of FIDO

The new one:

Rebranded Home Page - Fido.ca

For a quick comparison, here they are, one next to each other:

Side by Side - Old VS New Home Page fido.ca

Now, it looks like they also changed some structure of the website. But what about permanent redirects? It looks like there are not in place. Old pages are now not accessible from old links (how much do we work to build links, isn’t it?).

This page http://www.fido.ca/portal/en/packages/prepaid_airtime.shtml returns one of the worst 404 pages I’ve ever seen:

Fido 404 page

For the above page, Yahoo reports 86 external pages linking to it. Now, those are 86 pages linking to nothing. Because the old pages are not 301 redirecting to new ones. Other wasted links pointing to (count one more for each because of this post) :

http://www.fido.ca/portal/en/packages/prepaid.shtml - 202 lost links

http://www.fido.ca/portal/en/packages/monthly.shtml – 122 lost links

http://www.fido.ca/portal/en/packages/fidouno.shtml – 48 links

Under http://www.fido.ca/portal/ directory there are 375 pages indexed by Yahoo. How many of these pages would receive wasted inbound links?

If I would be working with FIDO I would go check the website logs for 404 errors and I create an usable 404 page in hours. Then I will setup my Google Webmaster Tools account and Yahoo Site Explorer account, analyze where do I get the links from, and have my programmers fix the 301 redirect, as soon as possible. Then, I’ll have my IT stuff trained on basic and advanced SEO.

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