To do this, you need to work on your SEO rankings. This will allow you to appear in search results for specific searches about your business and will make your website more visible to potential customers.
You invest a lot of time, effort and marketing money to get to where you are today. You shouldn't lose it in the redesign process. Some companies make the high-level mistake of believing that one does not affect the other. But there are actually certain steps you need to take to ensure that you don't sacrifice your SEO rankings when moving from an old website to a new one. In this blog, we'll highlight the ways to improve and top strategies for your SEO rankings.
Here are the few points one must look on to for maintaining SEO rankings after redesigning:
1. Crawling
Crawling ensures that search engines can find your website. This is very important given that there are billions of live websites out there. You want to make it as easy as possible for search engine bots to understand, index, and crawl the content you provide. Crawling refers to the process of search engines searching for updated or new web pages. One can use Google Search Console to see how many pages on your website Google have crawled. Googlebot continues to crawl the index pages, search and web. One of the regular reasons why Googlebot doesn't have a website are because the website has just launched, the website design makes it difficult to crawl effectively, or your policies prevent Googlebot from crawling. You must allow Googlebot to access all JavaScript, CSS and image files used on your website.
You should also use the robots.txt file to tell Googlebot which pages do not crawl. It should be placed in the root directory of your site. You can use Google Search Console which has a "robots.txt" generator. For example, Google doesn't recommend allowing internal search results pages to be crawled. Why? Users will be disappointed if they click on one search engine result but find a different search engine result on your website.
2. Internal links
It's time to fix bugs in your internal linking architecture once you're done deleting pages and setting up 301 redirects. All internal links that point to permanently deleted pages must also be removed, while links that point to pages that redirect to the new URL must be updated. If you don't update the link to the new URL, people will still be redirected to the page they want. However, this will place an unnecessary load on the server, which will affect the loading speed of your pages. In the end, this will reduce the user experience and you will lose the opportunity to force them to take favourable actions.
In addition to checking your content's internal links, it's important to pay attention to your navigational links. Simple and delicious top menus and more functional footers are trending right now, which means that redesigning your website may require removing some items from your menu and adding or removing new sections. Both of these can have a significant impact on your internal connection architecture.
3. Keep your old website alive
We do not recommend applying all the changes you want to your website directly. Redesigning a website is a lot of work and you can easily run into some obstacles along the way. If this happens on your live website, it could degrade the user experience or, worse, lead to its complete destruction. In the end, your efforts to improve your brand can cause permanent damage.
A common practice in a website redesign is to keep the original website intact and alive during the redesign process. Using an old website as a reference can be very important if you are having problems developing a redesigned website because it will save you a lot of time, effort and financial resources to fix it.
You can keep your old website running while you work on it by making proper copies and placing them in the developer subdomain where all the development and testing processes can be done behind the scenes. However, you should make sure that the developer's website is not accessible to search engines and internet users; so that search engines don't penalize your search rankings and users don't accidentally find your unfinished website.
4. Browse your old website
Once you have a copy of the website in the temporary URL, continue crawling your old website. This way one can easily export all the elements that are important for your on-page optimization. This includes meta descriptions, headers title tags, replacement tags and meta titles.
Crawling your old website is very useful for keeping pages that perform well in search rankings. Also, crawling your old website will be useful for protecting your website's dynamic content types as you move from developer to live.
Maintaining highly effective pages is mandatory, in some situations, this practice will render this practice impossible or useless. For example, if a significant change to your product or service forces your website to process, it will require an optimization process and your own content creation.
5. Perform an SEO audit for your current website
Before making any changes to your current website, it is important to take stock. This will help you decide what works and what doesn't.
- Analyze initial keywords
Search which keywords or phrases rank well for your website. One can use rating verification tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs. You should also check which pages are generating the most organic search traffic from the similar keywords you are using. Make sure these pages are included on your new website and that you save them as often as possible. This includes proper migration of metadata, videos, images, and file names. To keep track, it is useful to make a table where you can enter all the admissible data. You can use this as a comparison and reference after and during redesign so as not to lose all your important assets.
- Architecture of the website
There is a high chance that your URL structure will slightly change if you redesign your website. This is fine as long as the changes are gradual and you notify search engines of any changes. It means that once you've created internal links to your redesigned website, you'll need to submit your updated XML sitemap and make sure your navigation links, page structure, and 301 redirects match them. This will help seamlessly display your new site structure and provide a better user experience. Site architecture isn't just about how your pages are organized. This also includes navigation and internal links, as changes to your URLs can cause internal links to fail on your page. They have a lot to do with user experience and are therefore important for your website's SEO ranking, so you should include this in your audit. There's an essay that makes this part of the redesign easier. You can also use crawl data to track your internal connection structure.There is a high chance that your URL structure will slightly change if you redesign your website. This is fine as long as the changes are gradual and you notify search engines of any changes. It means that once you've created internal links to your redesigned website, you'll need to submit your updated XML sitemap and make sure your navigation links, page structure, and 301 redirects match them. This will help seamlessly display your new site structure and provide a better user experience. Site architecture isn't just about how your pages are organized. This also includes navigation and internal links, as changes to your URLs can cause internal links to fail on your page. They have a lot to do with user experience and are therefore important for your website's SEO ranking, so you should include this in your audit. There's an essay that makes this part of the redesign easier. You can also use crawl data to track your internal connection structure.
- Check the feedback on your website
Backlinks play an important role in maintaining your SEO ranking and you need to make sure that backlinks are not compromised when you make changes to your pages. See all recent links pointing to your website. If any of these are linked to a page you removed or changed, take the time to link to the appropriate website and have them update the backlink. If this is too difficult or will drain your resources disproportionately, you can create redirects to ensure that your redesigned website continues to benefit from the traffic generated by these backlinks.
6. Set up 301 redirect
Once you have a detailed understanding of which inbound, keywords and pages links are most relevant to your current ranking, you can further customize your referral plan.
You should use 301 redirects for URLs affected by your redesign. Redirect 301 applies when you want to delete an old page and create a new page for the same purpose. One can also use it to move a page to another part of the website without changing the page name. Lastly, 301 redirects are also useful for removing subdomains such as blogs or additional sub-domains, while leaving all the components hosted on them in different areas of your website.
It's important to note that you should set up a 301 redirect while your website is still in the setup process. That way, you can see each page you want to delete and redirect each page. You can also crawl the website to see all the pages that need to be redirected. You can also export scanned data for further review. Once your website goes from development to live mode, everything will go according to plan.
7. What if you don't set up a 301 redirect to a URL?
If you don't use 301 redirects or use them incorrectly, you'll receive a "404 not found" error message when you click the page. If someone visits your website and they encounter this error instead of visiting a page on your website, it will reduce user experience and lower your search rankings.
However, there are times when 404 errors come in handy. For example, if you have a page that no longer adds value to your audience or ranking, you can leave it as a 404 instead of creating another page with similar content or redirecting to the home page and other non-page meanings. Google appreciates this ability to delete a page or redirect to any page on your website.
While Redirect 301 permanently forwards from one URL to another, it also transfers incoming links and thus 90% to 99% of link equity. Therefore, this type of redirect is a much better choice than a temporary 302 redirect. A 302 redirect is only used when refreshing a web page, so as long as you only make changes to that page, the user experience isn't affected. However, using 302 redirects can be a little tricky. In some cases, it can even hurt your SEO rankings. While using it one has to be more careful.
8. Update XML sitemap
Once you complete your navigation 301 redirects, page structure, and internal links, you can update the XML sitemap and submit it to search engines. Make sure all the elements are consistent when defining the new structure of the site so that search engines can more easily identify the changes made.
9. Trust on Expert
Redesigning your website should improve your SEO and increase your conversions. Otherwise, why go through all the trouble? Make sure you sharpen your tools properly with a successful website redesign. Use only the services of the most reputable and reliable SEO experts in the industry.
If one will make fewer changes to the old website, then there are fewer chances of mistakes. These errors may seem insignificant individually, but together they can affect or interfere with your website redesign project. This approach is especially pronounced when working with URLs. Keep your page names and URL structure as unique and original. Change is good as long as it takes and will ultimately add more value to your brand. If you have content that is already performing well, you should also stick with it. If you think it needs to be changed or you need a facelift, once the redesigned website is live and the content is indexed and ranked, you can deal with it. This has been mentioned in the margins in the previous section, but it is very important and needs to be repeated.
10. Monitor the results
Once your redesigned website is up and running, you can now monitor the results to see if the changes you made have taken effect. While you can expect certain fluctuations at the start, an effective web design will get you back to basics within a month, if not sooner. Take this opportunity to quickly find the problem so it can be fixed before it causes more damage. Monitor your performance on the keywords and pages you are interested in to ensure you maintain or even improve your previous rankings. A technical audit will be very helpful to keep you up-to-date on any technical issues. Online tools like DeepCrawl and Moz are very useful for identifying potential problems before they become problems.
11. High-quality unique content
High quality and unique content are at the heart of SEO success. To attract search engines, you need to fill your website with content.
First, make sure there are at least 300 words of original content on each page. Search engines can find duplicate content and penalize your page for using copied content. Content should be broken up into shorter sections, for example with subheading H2, so that they are easy to scan.
Above all, content must meet Google's EAT criteria: competence, credibility, and reliability. Google introduced this terminology in 2018. EAT is highly critical of sensitive issues such as healthcare, science, and law.
Factors that increase EAT rankings include citing reputable experts (e.g., if you run a health website, contact a healthcare professional) and referring to reliable sources (e.g., .edu or .gov sites).
12. Do not fix it, if it is not broken
If one will make fewer changes to the old website, then there are fewer chances of mistakes. These errors may seem insignificant individually, but together they can affect or interfere with your website redesign project. This approach is especially pronounced when working with URLs. Keep your page names and URL structure as unique and original. Change is good as long as it takes and will ultimately add more value to your brand. If you have content that is already performing well, you should also stick with it. If you think it needs to be changed or you need a facelift, once the redesigned website is live and the content is indexed and ranked, you can deal with it. This has been mentioned in the margins in the previous section, but it is very important and needs to be repeated.
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