Change is good, right? In Internet marketing this is certainly the case. A fresh web design, for example, can really boost traffic and make your site more functional for visitors. But keep in mind that when it comes to website redesign, change comes with a caveat.
In your haste to improve your site, it might not occur to you that any changes you make may affect your previous SEO efforts. You’ve worked hard to build your online presence; you want to make sure that your changes don’t wipe out all that you’ve gained.
To that end, here are some things to keep track of when you redesign your site:
Keyword optimization
Think about which keywords you’re targeting and whether you should add new ones for which you want to rank. Check your analytics to research keywords that are driving the most traffic, and be sure to keep optimizing for them with your new design.
For instance, if you decide to eliminate pages or combine information onto one page, the keywords for which those pages were optimized will be affected. Don’t eliminate important pages with solid keywords that are driving traffic to your site. At the same time, a website redesign is a good opportunity to optimize for fresh new keywords and phrases that people are using to find you.
Content for each page
Each page of your new site will be indexed by the search engines (more specifically, by their web bots), so treat each page accordingly. Keep track of the performance of the content on your pages. Remember—the search engines need time to index new pages and pages that have been altered significantly. During this time you can keep checking to make sure that your web pages (and your newly redesigned site in general) are still performing well.
Page redirects
Broken links can kill sales. Managing your redirects after a website redesign is critical to making sure that visitors have a good experience and stay on your site. To ensure this, let both search engines and people know that pages are missing or their locations have changed.
Another important consideration here—if your old site has been up for awhile, most likely each of your pages has many inbound links from other sites. If you don’t send the bots and your visitors to the new pages, they may as well be falling into a black hole.
On-site SEO
If you need to rewrite your meta keywords, title tags and meta descriptions, do so before your new site goes live. As mentioned above, each page will need to be identified and indexed properly by the search engines, so the accuracy of these elements of on-page SEO is important.
After you update all of these elements, take time to analyze how your pages are doing over time. If any adjustments need to be made, you can tweak as you go.
All of these factors affect your site’s overall performance with the search engines, as well as the user experience for your site's visitors. If you’re embarking on a website redesign, don’t underestimate the effect it will have on your SEO efforts. Taking care of these important elements of SEO will ensure that your new site continues to work hard for you.
