When it comes to giving your website a fresh new look, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of new designs and features. But here’s the thing: if you’re not careful, you could end up undoing years of hard-earned SEO progress. That’s why it’s key to have a solid website redesign SEO strategy in place as you begin your overhaul.
Let’s take a look at how you can give your site a makeover without sacrificing your search engine rankings.
Why SEO is Crucial During Website Redesign
Protecting Existing Rankings
Think of your current rankings as a delicate house of cards: one wrong move during the redesign process, and the whole thing could come tumbling down. That’s why it’s essential to approach your redesign with a keen eye on SEO; by maintaining your existing rankings, you’re preserving the visibility you’ve worked so hard to achieve.
Ensuring User Experience (UX)
Here’s something many people overlook: SEO and user experience go hand in hand. Search engines love websites that provide a great user experience, and so do your visitors. A well-executed redesign should enhance both SEO and UX, creating a win-win situation for both your rankings and your users.
Retaining Organic Traffic
Your organic traffic is the lifeblood of your online presence, and a poorly managed redesign could see those numbers plummet overnight. By focusing on SEO during your redesign, you’re ensuring that the traffic you’ve built up over time continues to flow to your new and improved site.
Website Redesign SEO Checklist
Conduct SEO Audit
Before you even think about changing a single pixel, it’s important to understand where you stand; conducting a thorough SEO audit gives you a clear picture of your current performance, helping you identify what’s working well and what needs improvement. This baseline will be invaluable as you move forward with your redesign.
Create 301 Redirects
If you’re planning on changing your URL structure (and let’s face it, many redesigns do), 301 redirects are your best friend. They ensure that users (and search engines) are seamlessly directed from your old pages to your new ones, and this not only preserves your SEO juice but also prevents frustrated users from landing on 404 error pages.
Preserve On-Page SEO Elements
Your redesign guide for ecommerce websites should also include a plan for preserving crucial on-page SEO elements. This means carrying over your carefully crafted meta titles, descriptions, header tags, and keyword-rich content, elements which are the backbone of your SEO strategy.
Optimise Images and Media
Visual content is great for engagement, but it can be a double-edged sword when it comes to site speed. As you redesign, take the time to optimise your images and media files; compress images without sacrificing quality, and consider lazy loading for media-heavy pages. Your users (and search engines) will thank you for the speedy load times.
Mobile Responsiveness
In today’s mobile-first world, a responsive design isn’t just nice to have – it’s essential, so ensure your redesigned site looks and functions beautifully on devices of all sizes. This not only improves user experience but is also a key factor in search engine rankings.
Test Website Speed
Speed kills – or in this case, slow speed kills your SEO. Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to test your new design’s performance, and if you find your redesigned site is slower than molasses, it’s time to go back to the drawing board and find ways to optimise.
Best Practices for Redesigning a Website Without Losing SEO
Plan and Strategise
A successful redesign doesn’t happen by accident: take the time to plan out your redesign strategy, keeping SEO at the forefront of your mind. This means mapping out your new site structure, planning your content migration, and setting clear goals for what you want to achieve with your redesign.
Backup Current Website
Before you start tearing down walls, make sure you have a solid backup of your current site. This isn’t just about having a safety net, but also about having a reference point; you might need to refer back to your old site structure or content during the redesign process, so keep it handy.
Monitor and Track Changes
As you roll out your redesign, keep a close eye on your analytics. Are your rankings holding steady? Is your organic traffic taking a hit? Adjust with your data if you’re seeing negative figures.
Consult SEO Experts
Let’s face it – balancing website redesign SEO can be complex, and one mistake can ruin years of hard rank pushing. For this reason, we’d always recommend bringing in the experts to overlook the process and help out where necessary. As an SEO and PPC agency London businesses trust, we’ve guided countless clients through successful redesigns that boost both aesthetics and SEO performance, so don’t hesitate to give us a call for some guidance.
Potential SEO Risks During Website Redesign and How to Avoid Them
Content Duplication
Duplicate content can be a real thorn in your SEO side, and during redesign, it’s easy for content to get duplicated across multiple pages. Keep a keen eye out for this, and use canonical tags where necessary to point search engines to the preferred version of your content.
Broken Internal and External Links
Nothing frustrates users (or search engines) more than clicking on a link and landing on a 404 error page. As you redesign, make sure to update all your internal links. Don’t forget about external links pointing to your site – reach out to webmasters and ask them to update their links to your new URLs.
Loss of Structured Data
Structured data helps search engines understand your content better, so during redesign, it’s easy for these snippets of code to get lost or broken. Make sure to carry over and update your structured data as part of your redesign process.
URL Structure Changes
Changing your URL structure can be like moving house without telling anyone – your visitors (and search engines) won’t know where to find you. If you must change your URLs, make sure you have a solid 301 redirect strategy in place.
Final Thoughts
Redesigning your website doesn’t have to mean sacrificing your hard-earned SEO progress. By following this website redesign SEO checklist and keeping SEO at the forefront of your redesign strategy, you can give your site a fresh new look while maintaining (or even improving) your search engine rankings.
And if you’re planning a website redesign and want to ensure your SEO stays intact, we’re here to help. Our team of experts can guide you through the process, ensuring your new site looks fantastic and ranks even better than before.
Remember, a successful redesign balances aesthetics with functionality and SEO. It’s about creating a website that not only looks great but also performs well in search results and provides an excellent user experience.
