SEO do we need to upgrade?

We have a Version 1.3.8a site that has been trading since 2008 and we have been told by an SEO company that we have to upgrade to 1.5.4 otherwise an SEO campaign will not be successful, is this true?

We are reluctant to upgrade as the site has a custom template which has been further customised and dropdown navigation and other changes done so an upgrade would be virtually a rebuild and will be very costly with downtime as well.

Windski

windski:

We have a Version 1.3.8a site that has been trading since 2008 and we have been told by an SEO company that we have to upgrade to 1.5.4 otherwise an SEO campaign will not be successful, is this true?

If you don't purchase their services then it is true, their SEO campaign has not been successful.

Their success (or lack of) has nothing to do with your site though.

windski:

We are reluctant to upgrade as the site has a custom template which has been further customised and dropdown navigation and other changes done so an upgrade would be virtually a rebuild and will be very costly with downtime as well.

1. You should seriously consider upgrading for security reasons.
2. As long as the overrides folders have been used you'll not lose anything in this regard.
3. A rebuild/upgrade at a time of your choosing is going to be far less costly than having to rebuild after a hack or after the site becomes unusable due to server updates where you don't get a choice in the matter
4. An upgrade/rebuild, done at a time of your choosing, will require little to no downtime. A forced upgrade could have the site offline for days,

Cheers
RodG

Many thanks Rod.

We have already had to use a work around for a server PHP upgrade.