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Website redesign is not uncommon in the digital marketplace. It is important to meet the evolving needs of users and stay updated on the latest web design trends. If your website design seems outdated and is not delivering the results you expect, it might be time for a change. Your website makes the first appeal to the visitors about your brand, so it needs to be professional, modern, user-friendly, and easy to navigate.
Ideally, a website should be updated every few years to add new functions, improve user experience, and achieve the desired results. However, it's not always easy to redesign a website without compromising SEO and traffic. If anything goes wrong during the redesign, your website's SEO may be disrupted, resulting in a drop in organic traffic.
If you want to redesign your website without losing SEO, it's best to seek help from a professional website redesign agency. These experts will guide you through the process of a redesign, ensuring a smoother transition of your website while keeping its SEO intact.
In this blog, we will provide some essential tips to maintain your website's SEO during a redesign, ensuring a successful transition to a more functional website.
Reasons for Website Traffic Drop After a Redesign
Website traffic drop could occur for any reason after a website redesign. If you want to redesign a website without losing SEO, you have to first understand the causes of website traffic loss. Recognizing the causes of website traffic is important to resolving the issue with perfection. Some main causes of website traffic drop include:
Redirect Errors
Improper and wrong redirecting is one of the primary causes of website traffic loss after a redesign. If you do not properly implement a redirect, search engines and users trying to access your old URL will encounter 404 Not Found errors. This disruption negatively impacts your search engine ranking, ultimately resulting in a traffic decline.
Change in Site Structure
The structure of your site is crucial in determining how search engines crawl and index your website. A sudden change in site structure can make it difficult for a search engine to index your pages and disrupt user experience. As a result, your website can experience a drop in traffic.
Content Change
We all know how important SEO-friendly content is for a website. If your website loses SEO-friendly content due to redesign, its ranking and traffic can drop. For example, if you remove a well-performing keyword or change the valuable content, your website may experience traffic loss.
Site Redesign SEO Checklist
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Preserve the valuable and Quality Content
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Conduct a Thorough Website Audit
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Implement Proper 301 Redirects
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Ensure a Proper Google Analytics Tracking Code Implementation
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Upgrade Information Architecture
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Optimize Page Loading Speed
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Test Your Website After Redesign
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Optimize On-Page Elements
How to Redesign a Website Without Losing SEO?
Many people ask the common question, How do I redesign my website without losing SEO? The answer is very straightforward. Redesigning a website without losing SEO is not easy, and it requires expertise and careful planning. To redesign a website without losing SEO, you must follow the essential SEO checklist. It's unarguably the most critical step. Additionally, getting help from a website redesign SEO expert can provide an extra advantage. These experts can make sure SEO considerations are prioritized at every stage of the redesign process. Here are some key things you should keep in mind when redesigning your website.
Conduct A Pre-Redesign SEO Audit
To safeguard your website from traffic loss after a website redesign, the first and most critical step is conducting an SEO audit. We all know the importance of SEO for a website.
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Conduct a Website Audit: Before redesigning your new website, conduct a detailed SEO of your existing website to identify the pages that are bringing the most traffic and the reasons why.
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Check the Essential SEO Metrics: Identify the most important keywords and understand the essential metrics, such as the domain authority, search traffic, and revenue you get from the organic search.
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Asses the Content Quality: Assess the content quality and links to ensure they align with the SEO best practices.
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Examine Technical Elements: Check the technical aspects of your website that influence the user and search experience, such as its loading speed, mobile friendliness, and navigation.
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Review URL Structure & Metatags: Note your current site’s URL structure along with the meta titles' descriptions to keep things consistent during a redesign.
You can use tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console to assess the important information and plan for the next step.
Effectively Map and Optimize Your Content
Assessing your website's current content is important to ensure you can preserve the pages that bring the most value. You should identify the pages that bring the most traffic and assess their content. When redesigning or updating content, keep the content and keywords that are performing well. Also, avoid any major changes in the content, heading, or title that can affect your website's visibility. Only update content when necessary.
To keep the content intact and organized on your website, you can follow these practices:
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Create a spreadsheet to keep everything listed, such as URL, page title, Meta descriptions, header tags, content type, word count, etc.
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Check your existing content for SEO relevance and user-friendliness. Ensure the content fulfills the user's needs and is easily accessible and readable.
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Identify the content gap and update it with meta tags, keywords, and fresh information to maintain your website's visibility.
Create a Plan For Proper 301 Redirect
Not setting up a proper redirect often results in website traffic loss after a redesign. If you want to redesign the website without losing SEO, you have to make a redirect plan in advance. This ensures that everything goes smoothly without any issues. When you change your website design, its URL also changes, and a redirect can be an effective solution. If you're changing your URL, you should set a redirect before the website launch so that users and search engines can easily access your website. If possible, avoid changing the URL to minimize the need for 301 redirects. Before your new site launch, test the redirects to ensure they are properly implemented and guide users to the right pages. If any issue is identified, resolve it as quickly as possible. Additionally, connect with a website redesign services provider to get expert guidance and make the redesigning process easier and more effective without losing SEO.
Few Tips to Ensure a Proper 301 Redirect:
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Audit your website using tools like Ahrefs, Screaming Frog, and Sitebulb to create a list of existing URLs. Create a separate list for high-traffic pages, top tanking pages, and pages that contain valuable links.
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Note the old URL and their new destinations. Redirect the URL to the most relevant page based on the content. Choose the redirect method based on your website platform and your technical expertise.
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Test the redirects and ensure they are working correctly without any crawl errors or 301 redirect issues.
Ensure a Proper Google Analytics Tracking Code Implementation
A Google Analytics Tracking Code (GA Tracking Code) is a snippet of JavaScript that is integrated within a website HTML to collect user interaction data. Once a GA code is embedded on a website, it collects the data and sends it to your Google Analytics account. This data is then analyzed and presented in the form of reports, giving users insights into user behavior, traffic source, and other key metrics.
Setting up a proper Google Analytics Code can help you collect meaningful insights about your website performance and help you make informed decisions. If you do not set up the analytics code or update it, you could lose valuable data and fail to meet the needs of your redesigning goal. To ensure the code you have implemented is working properly, you have to ensure its functionality on every page. Incorrect tracking code implementation can lead to misinterpretations, impacting your decisions.
Ensure that the analytics code is implemented across all the pages of your website. Also, check it for errors using tools like Google Tag Assistant and Google Tag Preview. Verify its implementation using your browser’s developer tools and visit Google Analytics' real-time report to ensure your website is being tracked.
Conclusion
Remember, ensuring a website's success after redesign is not a quick fix. It requires a well-established strategy, careful planning, time, and expertise. If you have experienced a sudden drop in traffic after a website redesign, it's important to resolve the issues quickly. You can do it yourself by following the steps we have mentioned above. Or you can get help from a professional website redesign company. At Digitech India, we provide website redesign services, guiding clients through every challenge and ensuring a successful redesign without losing SEO.
