So, you are ready to change your website. You really want grand design and the latest and greatest technology, right? Absolutely. But how not to lose your SEO ranking on Google?
Updating the site is a necessary and exciting initiative for any business. A well-thought-out redesign might generate more traffic and new leads.
It can improve your branding image and encourage visitor interaction. However, when redesigning, you also need to think about the right course of action in order to maintain your SEO ranking during the redesign.
Before you redesign your website ...
The first question to ask yourself is what is the state of your positioning in the search engines? If not, do you have important keywords that you rank well on? If you head to a new site, will it affect your search ranking? The answer is “no” but only if you do it correctly according to what we will describe to you below.
Maintain your SEO ranking
What is the strategy to adopt to maintain your organic SEO ranking when redesigning your website? By following these steps, you will refresh your site while retaining your valuable traffic.
1) Understand your current keywords:
Is your website already ranking well and getting quality traffic? You may have already figured out what “keywords” people used to find you. Use a rank checker (such as Moz or SEMrush) to see all the keywords you've been ranking in and what pages they lead to.
Create a spreadsheet showing date, keyword, page, and current average rank. With this, you will do a comparison after the update and make sure that their performance is maintained or if changes are needed.
2) Know which pages generate traffic:
Check your analysis software. You do not have any? Google Analytics is a fantastic free tool! Install it on your site to see which pages are getting the most organic search traffic.
Make sure your new site takes these pages into account because you don't want to drop a high performing page. Understand the key phrases that brought visitors to the old pages. If you're using new content, make sure it's just as relevant as the previous content. If possible, use the same URL structure on the new site.
3) Understand the architecture of your site:
Site architecture refers to the tree structure of your site, including navigation and internal links. When redesigning a website, there's a good chance your URL structure will change, at least slightly. It is important to let search engines know about old, moved URLs.
If you don't take this step, it will penalize you and can destroy the SEO power you had with search engines. Fortunately, there are several tools you can use to analyze your site to understand the current architecture and how to migrate or redirect pages.
If your URL addresses have changed, you will need to plan to redirect the old ones to the new URLs, in such a way that you will tell search engines how your new tree structure is and you will keep your seniority.
4) Analyze your inbound links:
Inbound links are links from outside sites leading to pages on your website. They are extremely important to the SEO power over a website. If your site redesign changes your URL structure, and you haven't implemented the necessary redirects, you'll lose the value of your inbound link.
This means that it is quite possible that you are also losing your valuable traffic. So you have to run an inbound link analysis and you will know which pages are linked to you and to which pages your links refer.
5) Create a redirection plan:
Once you understand which pages get the most traffic and which are the most important inbound links, you can create a redirect plan.
Redirecting old pages in the correct way to their new versions using 301 redirects is a crucial part of the migration from an SEO perspective. Using 301 redirects is a safe way to keep your ranking and traffic safe. If your pages aren't redirected properly, your website will suffer.
6) Update your robots file:
When you migrate to your new site, several things may change. These may include your login area, shopping cart, and content management system. Your robot's file tells search engines which pages should not be indexed. It should be updated to match your new website structure.
7) Create a new sitemap:
Not only should you tell search engines which pages they shouldn't follow, but you also need to tell them which pages they should follow. Help them find these pages as quickly as possible! This is precisely the function of your XML sitemap.
Most content management programs like WordPress, Drupal, and others have plugins that allow you to create a sitemap. Any good development company will also be able to help you with this task.
8) Configuration of tools for webmasters:
After your redirection plan, setting up webmaster tools (also known as Google Search Console) is the most critical step. Google offers tools for webmasters and provides valuable information.
For example, they allow you to verify the ownership of the website in question and run other diagnostics. The search engine will even alert you when something is wrong.
In addition, if you change your domain name, Google has a way that can tell them you are moving and it can only be positive for your site to notify Google in advance. Webmaster tools are the best way to monitor your site before, during, and after migration to make sure everything is going well.
9) Follow-up after the move:
It is very important to monitor the Google Search Console (cited in point 8), to see if you have badly indexed URLs and to monitor the alerts, so that you can intervene to correct your site before being penalized.
To finish
As you can see, there are many things that need to be considered when redesigning a website, and there are many issues that can arise. However, with proper planning, you can revamp your site without negatively affecting search rankings or organic traffic.
By following these steps you will not only not lose your ranking, but you can even improve it, as search engines love websites that are updated regularly and to highlight them.
If you need advice or help, call on our SEO experts. If you want to update a website without losing your SEO momentum, we're here to help and share our experience with you! So contact us ! .