Google: It’s Easy To Mess Up A Site Revamp via @sejournal, @martinibuster

4 months ago 23

ARTICLE AD BOX

Google’s John Mueller answered a question astir the SEO effects from making idiosyncratic interface (UI) and idiosyncratic acquisition (UX) changes to a website, advising that it’s amended to program successful beforehand due to the fact that it takes longer to hole problems if the changes interruption the SEO.

User Interface (UI) And User Experience (UX)

The UI and UX are large elements of a website that impact however casual it is for tract visitors to execute what they are determination for, yet affecting idiosyncratic satisfaction.

User Interface elements impact however tract visitors interact with a website specified arsenic navigational, input forms, and informational icons.

User acquisition elements are a wider scope of considerations that subordinate to accessibility, consistency successful design, mobile responsiveness, readability, site speed, usability, and galore different elements that successful a good considered plan person a affirmative interaction connected idiosyncratic satisfaction.

This tin impact SEO ranking from method issues related to however Google crawls the leafage to on-page ranking considerations specified arsenic however contented is displayed and consequently understood connected a webpage.

Making sitewide changes to the UI and UX changes, successful summation to adding caller webpages, is simply a large undertaking and should not beryllium considered lightly.

Google Office Hours Site Changes

Google’s John Mueller work the submitted question:

“Anjaney asks: We’re preparing to motorboat a caller website plan for my company, involving UI/UX improvements and caller pages.

Is it amended to alteration the leafage plan 1 astatine a time?”

Mueller answered:

“One complexity is that a relaunch tin mean truthful galore antithetic things, from conscionable shifting a website to a caller server and leaving everything other the same, to changing domain names and each of the contented arsenic well.

First, you request to beryllium perfectly wide what’s changing connected the website.

Ideally representation retired each changes successful a document, and annotate which ones mightiness person SEO implications.

If you’re changing URLs, we person immoderate large guidance connected handling tract migrations in our documentation.

If you’re changing the contented oregon the UI, of people that volition impact SEO too.

If you’re unsure astir the effects, I’d powerfully urge getting assistance from idiosyncratic much experienced – it’s casual to messiness up a bigger revamp oregon migration successful presumption of SEO, if it’s done without due preparation.

Even with everything done properly, I get tense erstwhile I spot them being done.

Fixing a breached migration volition instrumentality overmuch much clip and effort than preparing well. In immoderate case, bully luck!”

Plan Before Making Changes

As Mueller recommends, it’s omniscient to make a program for however the changes volition rotation out. Of peculiar value is to papers the authorities of the website earlier immoderate changes are made, make a backup and usage a staging environment.

1 – Crawl The Website

An important happening to bash anterior to making large changes to a website is to crawl it with an app similar Screaming Frog. Crawl the website successful the archetypal signifier and past crawl the updated mentation (preferably earlier it goes live).

The crawl information tin beryllium utilized to place a scope of imaginable issues that tin beryllium fixed earlier the tract goes live.

Things that tin beryllium checked:

Spot missing pages
Catch misconfigured links
Missing meta and rubric elements
Review changes to linking patterns
Catch 404 errors
Check that 301 redirects are successful spot and decently functioning pages

2 – Create A Backup Of The Website

Always person aggregate backups of a website. There are truthful galore things that tin spell incorrect with a website backup. I’ve learned the hard mode to person aggregate redundant backups.

For example, a advisor who was moving connected my server downloaded the images utilizing the incorrect transportation type, corrupting hundreds of thousands of images. Fortunately, I had backups connected my desktop and duplicate backups connected the server itself, truthful the images could beryllium recovered.

I person implicit 20 years of acquisition managing my ain websites and dealing with lawsuit websites. The worth of making aggregate backups, including backups of backups stored connected abstracted media, cannot beryllium overstated.

3 – Stage The Website

It’s a champion signifier to signifier the caller website truthful that immoderate changes tin beryllium reviewed earlier they marque it to the unrecorded server.

The unrecorded mentation of a tract is referred to arsenic the accumulation situation and the non-live duplicate mentation is called the staging environment.

Website staging refers to the champion signifier of creating a duplicate mentation of a website (also known arsenic a “staging environment”).

Ideally the staging situation is connected a abstracted server oregon astatine slightest connected a abstracted determination connected the server truthful that determination is nary accidental of changes connected the staging situation accidentally making it to the unrecorded (production environment).

The staging situation is utilized for improvement and prime assurance investigating earlier changes are implemented connected the unrecorded website. The main extremity of staging a website staging is to place and hole issues, method bugs, oregon errors earlier they are carried implicit to the unrecorded mentation of the website (the accumulation environment).