How to Redesign a Website Without Losing SEO

I cannot archer you however often I person been called to do SEO connected a precocious redesigned website.

It’s a lot. Like, A LOT a lot.

Companies successful a panic due to the fact that they conscionable mislaid a ton of postulation to their website, and they are present trying to fig retired however to hole things.

The information is, with a spot of pre-planning, this panic was avoidable.

Most companies, erstwhile contemplating a redesign of their website volition mostly beryllium acrophobic with a new look/feel to the website. Or, cleaning up immoderate things. They deliberation and past – aft we motorboat – we’ll code SEO.

I’m present to say, that’s backwards. What if the exertion level that you’ve decided to usage for the redesign is inherently unfriendly to bots? What if you’ve built your website connected a instauration that has monolithic issues?

Your website is your storefront to the world. Each leafage of your website is simply a doorway.

For this reason, you should beryllium taking inventory of the worth of your existent website and looking astatine this successful a fewer ways:

1. Which pages person generated the astir postulation to your website? Mind you, determination whitethorn beryllium immoderate pages that thrust a batch of postulation but are wholly irrelevant to what you do. So, this is simply a subjective telephone arsenic to whether you privation to support these around.
2. Which pages are ranking good for cardinal terms? There are immoderate keywords which person debased hunt measurement but are ace important to your business. Make definite that you relationship for the pages that are driving these rankings and traffic. We tin presume that these pages whitethorn thrust important conversions oregon – astatine slightest – play an important relation successful the lawsuit travel (perhaps folks person learned astir you due to the fact that of this 1 leafage and its rankings)
3. Which pages person links to them. Even today, links to your website are ace important. There whitethorn beryllium blog posts that you’ve written that person a batch of links to them. You whitethorn beryllium considering wiping these pages retired with the redesign, possibly due to the fact that they are dated. What you should beryllium considering is whether these pages could beryllium rewritten/updated truthful that they – erstwhile again – go relevant. With this approach, you tin support the leafage (or make a caller URL/page and redirect the leafage with the links to this updated page/post).

SEO should beryllium a cardinal information successful a redesign effort. I would suggest that you should walk months successful SEO mentation earlier you adjacent see the look/feel of the caller website.

SEO Redesign Services impact each of the cardinal elements to guarantee that you relationship for each of the aforementioned considerations.

The steps progressive see specified items as:

1. An audit of wherever you are, currently.
   1. A presumption of analytics to place the pages that are driving your success, contiguous (and successful years past).
   2. A presumption of ranking reports to place the aforesaid (perhaps determination are near ranking opportunities that we could code with the redesign)
   3. A presumption of existent URL structures, and whether we should effort to support URLs arsenic overmuch arsenic imaginable oregon look to optimize these.
   4. Keyword probe to spot if determination are keywords that are important to your institution which haven’t been considered.
   5. Competitive investigation to spot what others person done with their websites to beryllium palmy (URL structure, Page structure, Navigation structure/taxonomy, Content structure, method elements including schema, Internal nexus structure, external/incoming links, etc.)
      1. Content Gap Analysis – place the contented gaps that you person with competitors that you’ve identified from this exercise. This spread could beryllium amount of contented connected Service pages, types of contented connected Services pages, resourceful contented that competitors person that we don’t, etc.
   6. From this audit, you present person the accusation that you request to physique a caller website:
      1. Information Architecture / Navigation Hierarchy / Taxonomy
      2. Content Plans
      3. URL structure
      4. Page operation (layout/wireframe)
      5. Resourceful contented needs / Blog contented calendar

As you’re gathering the caller website, you should execute regular checks to guarantee that things are being built with SEO successful mind.

1. Is the staging situation acceptable up to intimately mimic the situation of the caller website and are you preventing crawling and indexing of the staged mentation of the caller website? You could usage a disallow connection successful the robots.txt record and robots meta noindex nofollow connected each pages, to screen your bases.
2. Are the caller pages amended than our existing pages? (Or astatine slightest as good?)
3. Are our leafage speeds amended that existent leafage speeds? (Or astatine slightest as good?)
4. Do interior links usage due anchor substance to picture the pages being linked to?
5. URL structure, making enactment of caller URLs and sections wherever URLs person changed (you’ll request to make a redirecting mapping spreadsheet)
6. Which pages bash you privation successful the hunt results, vs immoderate interior pages that request to beryllium excluded?
7. Develop a sitemap for the caller website
8. Meta data, similar leafage titles and descriptions
9. Important keywords proceed to beryllium contiguous successful heading tags and successful the assemblage transcript of the page
10. Any leafage transcript that includes links to different pages uses keywords arsenic the anchor substance and not words similar read more oregon click here
11. Schema markup code, to assistance hunt engines recognize the contented of your page
12. Mobile friendliness
13. Accessibility compatibility and WCAG compliance

As you hole to launch, bash immoderate last QA connected a fewer elements:

1. Is analytics tracking everything correctly? Are each goals accounted for? Is Ecommerce tracking showing revenue?
2. Any PPC campaigns revised to relationship for the changes?
3. Is the sitemap accounting for each caller URLs?
4. Does the sitemap incorporate URLs that should not beryllium there?
5. Are redirects acceptable to go?
6. Make definite analytics is tracking everything that it ever has (every leafage tagged? Conversion tracking enabled?)

When deploying the caller site, sometimes the existent tract needs to beryllium taken down oregon enactment into attraction mode for a while, arsenic the developers bash their work. If you request to bash this, delight marque definite each pages connected the tract respond with a HTTP 503 presumption code. This tells the hunt engines that the tract is engaged and to travel backmost later. This ensures that portion the tract is down, they won’t marque immoderate updates to their hunt results. Please avoid, arsenic overmuch arsenic you can, having the tract instrumentality 400 oregon 500 HTTP presumption codes, arsenic immoderate prolonged outage of your site, could person hunt engines commencement to region those pages and it could instrumentality longer for them to beryllium reincluded again erstwhile the caller tract goes live.

The time has come…it’s clip to motorboat the caller (and improved??) website…You’re present pushing the website live. Here are the checks that you’ll privation to person successful place:

1. Remove the robots.txt disallow and robots meta noindex and nofollow directives connected each pages which are present going live.
2. Annotate successful Google Analytics the tract motorboat date, arsenic you’ll privation to beryllium capable to cheque pre/post performance
3. Leave the current/old sitemap successful spot successful Google Search Console to let clip for Google to admit the redirects that you’ve enactment into place. We urge that you permission this successful spot for 1 month.
4. Add the caller sitemap(s) to Google Search console truthful you tin show indexing and coverage
5. New sitemaps should besides beryllium included successful the robots.txt file
6. You should person already identified astatine slightest your apical 100 keywords that you’re acrophobic with and person these acceptable up to bash regular fertile checks. As the days walk from launch, you volition statesman to spot immoderate trends. Are things getting amended oregon worse? You mightiness expect a dip astatine the beginning, arsenic the hunt engines fig retired what you’ve conscionable done. Be patient. But don’t disregard losses, either. You should bash immoderate spot checks to spot if thing got screwed up.
7. Run leafage velocity checks. Even though you person done this portion the website was being built, your hosting situation determination volition beryllium antithetic than it is erstwhile the website goes live. I suggest moving checks connected each main leafage templates (home leafage / work leafage / merchandise leafage / blog post, etc.).
8. Do a tract query successful Google to cheque redirects (and besides spot if determination is thing funky successful the index). You bash this simply by typing site:sitename.com into Google. I suggest that you bash non-www mentation of this AND www version.
9. Run crawls via DeepCrawl, Screaming Frog oregon different crawling tool, to place immoderate issues.

There is simply a batch much to this process than conscionable those elements that I’ve mentioned above. But, conscionable by pursuing the steps present you should person overmuch much occurrence with your re-launch of your website, from an SEO perspective, than had you not taken the clip to work this post.

You could besides see hiring an SEO agency specifically to assistance you with this process. At Vizion, we person been progressive successful implicit 100 website redesigns and tin bring that history/perspective to your task and perchance prevention you a ton of headaches.

I privation you each the champion with your website redesign project!

At Vizion Interactive, we person the expertise, experience, and enthusiasm to get results and support clients happy! Learn much astir however our SEO Audits, Local Listing Management, Website Redesign Consulting, and B2B integer marketing services tin summation income and boost your ROI. But don’t conscionable instrumentality our connection for it, cheque retired what our clients person to say, on with our case studies.