From considering a major panoramic scale overhaul of your website like changing its URL structure, domain name, subdomains, internal link structure and page-level enhancement to making slight changes appearance-wise, alongside attempting to make the website more compelling for the inception of greater foot traffic, you can have multiple reasons to want to redesign your website without losing SEO. However, contrary to a popular belief that a website’s SEO needs to be set up just once, it isn’t the case ever. When a major chunk of the website is altered, multiple backlinks from other websites, URLs as well as SEO can be lost or even rendered useless. However, one can still aim to redesign website without losing SEO. This blog additionally contains an SEO website redesign checklist, that you could follow.
Despite the not very fair-weather nature of a website migration SEO impact, it can still be an opportunity to raise and better the SEO, page ranks and conversion rates. For websites with significant search engine traffic, a website overhaul or redesign ought to be thoroughly thought through and done carefully to maintain its SEO. Following the steps below and analyzing the website migration SEO impact, can help you keep tabs on what mistakes to avoid and what to practice for the search engine to reindex the content of your website, as it is enhanced and updated.
What is the Website Migration SEO Impact?
During a site makeover or redesigning, the following are crucial to redesign the website without losing SEO and to keep its rankings and SEO in good shape and working order:
1. Being aware of what meshes well on the current site– When you consider transferring SEO to a new website, you must keep a record of what works on the current one. Preparing an SEO website redesign checklist is imperative, besides listing all the pages, URL structure and sitemaps from the previous websites. Website redesign SEO considerations are not exactly an off-the-charts decision, but you will need something as basic as a backup of the existing sitemap.
2. Recognizing potential areas of improvisation– You may add more material, rearrange it according to the framework of your website, or even delete it completely. Adding new features or sections to the website can encounter some technical difficulties too. Even though it’s doubtful that the revamp would incorporate all of these changes, if not planned and implemented carefully, even one of these changes can negatively impact the website rankings and traffic.
3. Methodically preparing a new website location– It’s advisable that all changes, additions or alterations in appearance that you deem important, should be done on a temporary website with temporary URLs. Remodifying the existing website can cause glitching and erring for visiting traffic. You should carefully examine several areas of your website, such as the CSS, broken links (XENU- helps find broken links on the new page), and other such elements. Changes made to the alternative or temporary site should be tested duly before entirely switching domains.
4. ‘301 redirecting’ of all the outdated URLs to the fresh or current URL- Website migration SEO is synonymous with risking the loss of optimization if 301 redirecting isn’t set between the new and old URLs. The old URL will be forwarded to the new one by using 301 redirects. The search engine can flash 404 ‘web pages not found’ if the redirecting is not done systematically and properly you will also need to ensure that the additional pages are organized and stacked up in such a way that both visitors and search engines can locate them and comprehend their relationship.
5. Closely observing the consequences of the change- To redesign website without losing SEO, one should also closely examine the follow-up statistics and traffic of the website after the necessary alterations are done.
SEO Website Redesign Checklist-
An infallible and dependable SEO website redesign checklist should look somewhat as follows:
- You should analyze the site contents completely and chalk out the new designs and redirection you wish to assign to it.
- You must look at more than just avoiding the debacle of Website migration SEO loss; such as fueling content operations or determining new SEO goals maximized through Content Management Systems.
- Website back-up to a temporary URL where the changes are finalized, checking for broken links (through XENU or Google Webmaster) is a must. Add 301 redirecting links, so that you can receive the traffic from both old and new backlinks and URLs.
- After making the necessary changes and shifting to the new website domain, you should submit the remodified website’s XML to Bing, and Google. To not encounter any robot.txt files and make your website entirely crawlable, run the ‘fetch-and-render’ option.
- Checking for website migration SEO impact after updating, is imperative to check the slowing down of traffic if the website or alterations are too big.
Redesigning a website is a crucial step as you may loose SEO traffic initially. To avoid this, hiring someone who is an expert in SEO migration is a better option. GTECH, an SEO company in Dubai can help you in making a full-fledged checklist without hurting your ranking and traffic.