klist for website redesign: Retaining SEO and improving it //

New websites should provide an opportunity to improve digital marketing, SEO and conversion rates. Unluckily, it can be a disaster for SEO if not managed carefully.

This article will outline the key areas that you should consider when redesigning your website in order to maintain (and improve) its SEO.

If improving and retaining your SEO is important for your website, your first task is to learn how to integrate SEO from the very beginning.

The SEO primer “How to Build Search Engine-Friendly Sites“, will give you the knowledge and background to integrate SEO into your website redesign.

A cautionary tale

It can be difficult to maintain traffic during a redesign.

John Mueller, a Googler, was asked whether there is any way to avoid traffic loss when redesigning a website. His answer was a simple, but strong one – no.

In my career I’ve seen many expensive websites with mission-critical functions that have decimated organic traffic, which is important and profitable.

Among the horror stories, I have always remembered one particular project.

Website for a small charity that helped people with multiple sclerosis. The charity was underfunded and promoted a more natural approach to MS.

The site gradually grew organic traffic over a period of several years, but it desperately needed an overhaul in terms of its visual appeal.

The new website was launched after a 12-month-long redesign of two websites involving both companies. Everyone was excited to take things to the next stage.

Then this happened:

The organic traffic has dropped by more than 90%.

The traffic was low.

Excitement turned into panic

After waiting a month for things to get better and not receiving any support from the two web design agencies involved we received the call. We took on the project as a free of charge.

It is hard to resolve these problems after the event.

Even though it is difficult to reverse engineer problems, you can still do so by analyzing your organic traffic.

If SEO is not considered, a number of issues can arise that make it difficult to recover traffic.

We recovered 90% of the traffic, but only after much pain, wailing, and gnashing our teeth. It was painful, but not for the drivers.

We helped the charity design a new website and integrated SEO into its planning. This allowed the charity to surpass the organic traffic of the past.

We were very careful with this site to set clear goals andtrack KPIs so that we could understand what worked.

It is easy to understand the SEO website redesign lesson – planning to fail is not planning.

SEO and website redesign – the basics

Three key elements are necessary to maintain (and, ideally, improve) your organic rankings and traffic during a redesign:

• Understanding what works with SEO today.
• Know the common problems that arise with a redesign.
• Plan out in detail what you will be changing on the new site.

Aim high is my advice. Do not just focus on retaining traffic. Improve it. Understand your strengths and weaknesses.

Look at each area in detail.

What is working now

You should have an idea (hopefully!) of what works in your SEO campaign: the keywords and topics which rank, the pages that generate organic traffic, and other organic visibility.

You can make sure that the old website is not ranked for anything you no longer have.

Common Issues

A site redesign can have many different reasons. It can be due to branding, technology or traffic.

Things that can be problematic or change for SEO when a redesign is done include:

• You can remove content. It won’t be ranked if it doesn’t exist!
• The content can be altered.
• The site hierarchy may change.
• URLs can change.
• The optimization of the page may change.
• You can add new content.
• Sites can be expanded with new sections.
• You may use new technology or features.
• There are always new technical issues.
• The internal link structure may change.
• Domain names may change.
• The subdomain can change.
• The protocol is subject to change.

All of the above factors can affect your SEO. If there are several issues, like content being changed and moved to a different URL, it is harder to pinpoint the cause.

Multi-issues can compound your SEO issues. Change your website’s architecture, CMS, domain and hosting all at once? It will increase the chances of SEO issues.

This conversation will help you balance your desire to change and the need to improve organic traffic. You don’t have to do everything all at once. Minimize the variables.

Assist an SEO stakeholder in all discussions about the website. They will have information on what works, and how it should be incorporated into the site.

Don’t wait until the development phase to implement SEO.

What will be different with the redesign?

You can now review your goals and see what you want to achieve with the new website.

Two important SEO goals are:

• Preserve the current rankings and traffic.
• Improve your rankings and traffic.

You should have a sitemap of the new website that you can compare with the old site to create URL mappings.

Website redesign SEO checklist

With some planning, it is possible to avoid SEO disasters, and maintain SEO when redesigning a website.

This website redesign checklist ensures that you will maintain your SEO rankings and traffic by following the steps.

Keep the old website live

If you can, keep the old website live at a private address. Be sure that a crawler cannot access the site.

It’s best to use HTTP authentication, but the ability to go back to an older site when you run into a problem can be invaluable.

The web archive will usually have some or all of the site, but the real thing is always better.

Save crawl data

You can still save a crawl even if the site is on a temporary URL. This is a great use of Screaming Frog, and you can also load the crawl from the old site if you want to analyze it.

Fix what is not broken, but don’t make it worse

Wherever possible, keep things the same – especially URLs. Keep the URL structure and the page names the exact same. This will make it easier to avoid problems.

You have to change. Make sure that the changes are justified and not done just for fun.

You don’t have to keep anything that doesn’t work.

Create 301 redirects

The first thing you should do is redirect old URLs into new ones. When redesigning a website, if possible, you should keep the content of duplicate URLs.

You can, for example, keep the same URL structure when you redesign your WordPress or Shopify site. This is desirable. You will need a list of URLs from the old site and the new one if you don’t want to use a spreadsheet.

You will need to crawl all the URLs to make sure that everything is 301 redirected correctly.

Keep your content up to date

You’ll want your content to perform well so you should minimize (or improve) any changes.

After your content is indexed and listed, there will be many opportunities to make changes, but at this time, try to limit the number of variables.

Optimize for on-page elements

You can easily export key elements from your old website, such as page titles, meta description, headers and more.

Keep these elements the same if the site is optimized.

Update your backlinks

Document backlinks, and note where URL changes have been made. Update these links by using Google Search Console or the usual link index tools.

Contact the site managers and ask them to update their links if possible. Updated backlinks will help the new website to be indexed quickly.

Please be aware of internal links

Keep an eye out for any changes made to the internal linking structure. Your crawl data from the past can help you here.

This can affect the ranking of a page if you have pages with thousands of links that were previously internal but now are barely linked.

Update your XML Sitemap

Submit your XML Sitemap to Google and Bing.

Search engines will be able to quickly understand changes to the site if we align our 301s and page structure.

Monitor rankings

Expect some fluctuations but your baseline should return within a few months of the launch (ideally earlier).

Investigate your issues now to find and fix them. It can sometimes take longer to crawl deeper pages on more important sites.

Monitoring organic traffic

You can’t track every keyword for large sites. Instead, monitor key pages and the traffic they receive to see if you notice any improvements.

Google Search Console allows you to compare before and after images. This will help you identify any changes so that you can take appropriate action.

Conduct a technical audit

Use a technical audit tool as a proactive way to identify any issues.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is constantly improving, and you can get diagnostic information from Google. You can now track:

• Indexing.
• Sitemaps.
• Page experience.
• Mobile usability.
• Products.
• Enhancements.
• Links.

The information on this page can help you identify and fix problems.

Retaining and improving your SEO when redesigning

Planning is key.

Many new websites fail, but it is always because of a lack in planning.

In our experience, SEO failures during website redesigns can be attributed to a lack planning and a poorly articulated SEO plan.

You can launch a new website with confidence if you include SEO in the redesigning process.

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