SEO for Website Redesign
Planning to relaunch your website and want to maintain or grow your organic traffic? We can help!
Typical Web Design Projects
Does this scenario sound familiar? You spend months working with a web design team to get your website exactly where you want it. You finally launch the site and over the next weeks and months you start to notice a decline in leads or sales. You can tie the date to the new website but have no idea what is wrong nor does your web designer/developer.
We hear these horror stories all the time. Rather than reverting to what you had though (if there even is a backup copy), we focus on getting you even more leads or sales than what you had before.
Much like your roofer is not going to weigh in on your plumbing, it is not the job of your web designer (in their opinion typically) to weigh in on your SEO – these are separate industries!
Advantages of Including SEO in Your Website Redesign
- Prevents Loss of Rankings and Traffic
- Optimizes for Search Engines and Users Simultaneously
- Reduces Costs and Rework
- Improves Overall Site Performance
- Protects Revenue
- Aligns Goals Across Teams
Best Practices for SEO During Website Redesign or Migration
Redesigning or migrating a website is an opportunity to improve performance, usability, and search engine visibility, but it comes with risks if not handled correctly. Follow these best practices to ensure a seamless transition, preserve your SEO efforts, and avoid common pitfalls:
Pre-Migration Preparation
- Conduct a Pre-Migration Audit: Identify high-performing pages, backlinks, and critical elements to prioritize for preservation. Use analytics tools to understand what’s working and ensure those elements are carried over to the new site.
- Create a Redirect Strategy: Map old URLs to new ones using 301 redirects to maintain link equity and prevent 404 errors. A thoughtful redirect strategy safeguards your rankings and ensures a positive user experience.
- Back Up Your Old Site: Save a copy of the current site for reference or rollback in case anything is lost during the migration process.
Technical SEO Compliance
- Validate Crawlability and Indexability: Ensure your site architecture, robots.txt, and XML sitemaps comply with best practices to help search engines easily discover and index your pages.
- Test in a Staging Environment: Before launching, conduct a thorough SEO audit and usability testing to catch and resolve issues such as broken links, duplicate content, or indexation errors.
- Prioritize Page Speed and Mobile Usability: Optimize for Core Web Vitals, compress images, and ensure responsive design to enhance user experience and search rankings.
On-Page SEO Preservation
- Transfer Metadata and On-Page Elements: Carry over title tags, meta descriptions, alt text, and headers to avoid losing on-page SEO optimizations.
- Maintain High-Value Content: Keep pages with high traffic or valuable backlinks, or redirect them thoughtfully to ensure no valuable SEO equity is lost.
- Optimize for Keywords: When updating or rewriting content, ensure keyword optimization is factored in to maintain or improve organic visibility.
Avoid Common Redesign Mistakes
- Don’t Forget Tracking Codes: Reimplement analytics and tag manager codes (e.g., GTM, GA4) to continue tracking performance data post-launch.
- Avoid Data-Driven Blind Spots: Base design and content changes on user data and insights rather than assumptions to ensure usability and performance are not compromised.
- Plan URL Structure Changes: If altering URLs, create a detailed mapping plan to maintain search rankings and avoid broken links.
Post-Migration Monitoring
- Track Performance After Launch: Monitor rankings, traffic, and indexing regularly to identify and fix issues promptly. Tools like Google Search Console and analytics platforms are essential for post-launch success.
- Collaborate Across Teams: Encourage open communication between developers, designers, marketers, and SEO professionals to ensure alignment on goals and a smoother transition.
Additional Considerations
- Accessibility Compliance: Design for inclusivity by adhering to web accessibility standards, such as using ARIA roles, alt text, and keyboard navigation, to improve usability for all users and avoid legal risks.
- Communicate With Stakeholders: Keep all teams informed about the migration plan and its SEO considerations to ensure the project aligns with overarching business goals.
The DriveTraffic Process
When you work with us, we:
Listen to your desires and pain points when it comes to your existing website.
Clarify your goals. Are you just wanting to update the design of your website or do you want to improve its performance in a specific way?
Ensure Google Analytics is in place with goals that reflect what you want to achieve.
Get Google Search Console up and running, if it’s not already in place, so that we can understand the types of keywords your target audience uses.
Set up heatmap software to help us analyze your website visitors’ movements.
Start accumulating and reviewing data so that we can make further recommendations and changes to incorporate into your revised site that will ensure your goals will be met!
Free download
What’s the #1 SEO Mistake in Website Redesign?
Download a free PDF filled with useful information on how redesigning your website can negatively impact your SEO!
FAQ
1. Does redesigning a website improve SEO?
There is a misconception that website redesign equals an improvement in SEO, but that is typically not true. If your redesign just consists of a visual change and nothing else, your SEO will remain the same.
2. How do I redesign a website without impacting SEO?
Don’t change anything that is related to SEO! That includes page names, titles, descriptions, H1, content, and interlinking.
3. What does a website redesign cost?
That depends – are you just wanting to only change the look of your website? Or are you wanting to make it faster, more visible in Google, and more mobile-friendly? Some of these requests are heavier lifting and will change the price. Other questions to consider: Do you just want to change some of the graphics? Do you already have a style guide for your site or will need one created?
Looking to Incorporate SEO/UX Into Your Website Redesign?
Meet some of our website redesign clients
