How to Redesign a Website Without Losing SEO

I cannot tell you how often I have been called to?do SEO?on a recently redesigned website.

It’s a lot. Like, A LOT a lot.

Companies are in a panic because they just lost a ton of traffic to their website, and they are now trying to figure out how to fix things.

The truth is, with a bit of pre-planning, this panic was avoidable.

Most companies, when contemplating a redesign of their website will mostly be concerned with a?new look/feel?to the website. Or,?cleaning up some things. They think?and then – after we launch – we’ll address SEO.

I’m here to say, that’s backwards.?What if the technology platform that you’ve decided to use for the redesign is inherently?unfriendly?to bots? What if you’ve built your website on a foundation that has massive issues?

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

For this reason, you should be taking inventory of the value of your current website and looking at this in a few ways.

Questions to ask about your current website:

• Which pages have generated the most traffic to your website??Mind you, there may be some pages that drive a lot of traffic but are completely irrelevant to what you do. So, this is a subjective call as to whether you want to keep these around.
• Which pages are ranking well for key terms??There are some keywords which have low search volume but are super important to your business. Make sure that you account for the pages that are driving these rankings and traffic. We can assume that these pages may drive significant conversions or – at least – play an important role in the customer journey (perhaps folks have learned about you because of this one page and its rankings)
• Which pages have links to them??Even today, links to your website are super important. There may be blog posts that you’ve written that have a lot of links to them. You may be considering wiping these pages out with the redesign, perhaps because they are dated. What you should be considering is whether these pages could be rewritten/updated so that they – once again – become relevant. With this approach, you can maintain the page (or create a new URL/page and redirect the page with the links to this updated page/post).

SEO should be a key consideration in a redesign effort. I would suggest that you should spend months in SEO preparation before you even consider the look/feel of the new website.

SEO Redesign Services?involve all of the key elements to ensure that you account for all of the aforementioned considerations.

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