Is your company website getting spiffed up with redesign? Isn’t that exciting! Before it launches, make sure it is eye-catching and has the SEO in place. Yes, search engine optimization is essential with your website redesign as it was with the original website.
It doesn’t matter that you have your foothold in the industry already with an established audience and available product or service. When it comes to redesigned websites, SEO is still a vital element. This statement creates some questions, like:
- How is SEO affected by a website redesign?
- Why does a redesigned website need SEO?
- How do I utilize SEO in my website redesign?
We have answers to those questions and more; keep reading!
How is SEO affected by a website redesign?
There are two ways that a website redesign can be affected by SEO: Traffic and Sales. When SEO practice is omitted from a website redesign, the website loses traffic and lost traffic means loss of sales. Keeping SEO with a redesigned website could increase traffic, and that increases sales.
SEO optimizes a website to help humans and search engines find you through Bing, Google, Yahoo, or any search engine. No matter how spiffy and well-designed your website is, it won’t be found without Search Engine Optimization.
For a redesigned website, SEO is essential.
The SEO you’ve worked hard to research and maintain will have gone to waste if your website redesign doesn’t utilize its SEO. When SEO is damaged, rankings fall, and your website redesign will have zero value with the search engines and users. Then the traffic to your website drops with online sales falling off. Here are the stats to prove how SEO affects search results:
- The first page results of all searches keep 75% of the user’s attention.
- The top three search results are clicked on by 75% of all users.
- The first search result gets 33% of all user’s clicks.
Yes, there are other ways to bring traffic and paying customers to your website, but they all require an investment. For example, paid advertising will need a monthly ad budget, and email or social media will require investing.
When a redesigned website includes search engine optimization, it improves SEO. Improved SEO increases search results, and website rankings are improved. Sometimes, a website will begin to appear more in search results, giving it more visibility that reaches more potential customers and increases the target audience. All of that increase translates to more traffic, lead, and sales.
Also Read: How to Write SEO-Friendly Blog Content
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Why does a redesigned website need SEO?
We’ve established why your website redesign needs to incorporate SEO for an increase in website traffic, leads, and sales, right? If your old website didn’t use SEO, your redesigned website needs SEO for four significant reasons:
- 1. A redesigned website with SEO has an ROI.
- 2. SEO built-in to your redesign.
- 3. Preserve your current search engine optimizations
- 4. Establish a successful launch
1. A redesigned website with SEO has an ROI.
The expense of a website averages $1000 to $100,000 today. With that kind of expenditure, your website needs to perform and provide a healthy ROI. With SEO incorporated into your website redesign, it will bring you a healthy investment return.
When information page tiles and fast page speeds are optimized, your website becomes easy to find for search engines and users. By investing in optimizations that incorporate off-page SEO, you get the best ROI results. For the ROI to be long-term from SEO efforts, SEO must be in your marketing strategy in the future.
With the same ongoing marketing strategy that includes ongoing optimization, rankings will remain on top, and your company’s presence will expand in other search results, making your business more visible to other markets besides your targeted market.
2. SEO built-in to your redesign.
A new, redesigned website is equivalent to getting a new start for your company. It gives you the chance to design an optimized website at the front end and the backend with SEO. You can optimize the breadcrumb navigating, internal links, navigation, and page speed.
With a website redesign, you’re getting to build a website that search engines can find and users will love. SEO doesn’t mean your redesigned website will be boring either. Choose the right agency to work with your redesigned website will reflect their expertise and specialization, giving you a website that is attractive and SEO-friendly.
3. Preserve your current search engine optimizations
If your company has SEO in use now, you can’t afford to have SEO present in your website redesign. When SEO is left out and forgotten, there aren’t any redirects to the new site, and that, my friends, will cost you money. You’ll lose traffic to your website, and that loses leads and sales. SEO must be incorporated into your redesigned website, and any web design agency of value will know that to be accurate and relay this information to you.
Before you choose a web design company to partner with, get their view and understanding of search engine optimization and the impact it will have on your redesigned website’s design and performance. As well-known as SEO’s benefits are in the web design agency sector, it is amazing how many do not include SEO.
What does that mean to you and your business? All the effort and hard work you have put into your rankings will be gone when your redesigned website launches.
4. Establish a successful launch
For most companies, the purpose of having their website redesigned it to bring in more business and grow the business. When SEO isn’t utilized in a redesigned website launch, the website traffic, lead generation, and online sales will be reduced. The redesigned and updated website should make it easier for users to find you and visit, buy from you, or contact your company.
By incorporating SEO in your website redesign, you’re gearing your website for great success. A website design agency that is genuinely interested in helping their clients grow wouldn’t think of using SEO with any website redesign. SEO should be an automatic inclusion.
How do I utilize SEO in my website redesign?
Here is our SEO checklist for redesigning a website, provided to you at no charge:
- 1. Establish the architecture of the sitemap and information
- 2. Compile on-page optimization
- 3. Every 301 redirect should be mapped.
- 4. Create backups
- 5. Submit XML sitemap
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Establish the architecture of the sitemap and information
Before a prototype is created, compile your current content and site pages first, then use that content in combination with the new content to build the information and sitemap information. Consider reducing your website’s navigation for updating the information architecture. For example, creating this information for an e-commerce site for products listed:
- /products/women/blouses
- /products/women/shirts
- /products/women/sweaters
Using this architecture will help organize the site’s content better and create an improved browsing experience. The user that is shopping for women’s shirts will find them more accessible and faster.
Now, with your information architecture established, your sitemap can be outlined. The purpose of the sitemap is to guide search engines and users to navigate and understand your redesigned website. Usually, core pages are featured links, like your product categories or services, but remember, over 100 links is too much. A custom 404 page could be featured as well, depending on the design of your website.
Compile on-page optimization
Next, an audit of the existing content should be done by the design team, SEO team, and a web development company in NYC. If SEO has been used, this content will need to be optimized for search engine optimization, including the use of specific keywords targeted or links of trusted industry websites included.
This information should be compiled in an easy-to-access document. Google Sheets are an excellent tool for this step. As you are compiling and auditing the current content, keep watching for more optimization opportunities.
With your optimizations and revised architecture information, determining page location in your redesigned website comes naturally. For instance, an in-depth guide can be placed in the /guides/ section of your redesigned website versus in the blog/.
Add alt text to images where you don’t have any currently as part of your website redesign, something you should feel confident in trusting the agency you choose to partner with handling.
Every 301 redirect should be mapped.
With redesigned websites, redirects are critical for SEO because they tell search engines to locate the content. An example would be a website with a new domain name, should have redirects advising search engines to the new location.
A 301 redirect will keep the updated architecture on the map for your website’s information, even without a new domain name. Move the page “/winter-landscaping-services” to “/services/winter-landscaping-services/” and use a redirect.
Using a Google Sheet document to map your planned redirects will ease the intense and overwhelming feeling redirects can create. This is especially so for a large site because it can minimize the possibility of mistakes and ensure the current URLs for redirecting is used.
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Create backups
Backups are an essential component of any website redesign and SEO if the need to restore your previous website ever comes about, like forgetting to redirect a particular page. It would be best if you also considered setting up a temporary server for hosting your website on a computer or laptop back up of your current site on a computer or laptop. With a backup in place, moving forward with the launch of your redesigned website is good to go!
Submit XML sitemap
After launching your website, let the search engines know by submitting your website URL to Google via an XML sitemap. An XML sitemap offers an easy and fast solution because it provides instructions for search engines to crawl your entire website. You can also make manual submissions with Google Search Console.
Next, keep monitoring your organic traffic and rankings, and don’t be surprised to see a drop in rank or traffic, especially with a new domain. Watch for 404s errors in crawls. The agency you partner with should include this monitoring in their package.
Also Read: How To Choose The Right Digital Marketing Agency For Your Business
About GoMarketing
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We believe the informed client is the best, and we do that by sharing what we learn with them. Education for understanding for us and our clients is a big part of GoMarketing. Reach us via 805-413-7893 or message us online to learn more about our services or schedule a free consultation with our SEO experts.
