How to Redesign a Website Without Losing SEO?
How to redesign a website without losing SEO is a puzzling undertaking. It can kill all the excitement of getting a brand new website. But with a few precautionary steps, you can smartly redesign your website without affecting SEO. This blog explores just that.
Your digital marketing team has put in great efforts over the years to bring your website to the top ranking. Now you just can’t afford to lose those marvelous SEO (Search Engine Optimization) ratings through a website revamp. Yes. I understand your dilemma.
But let me tell you that your fear of website redesign as an invitation for SEO disaster is totally misplaced. All you need to do is follow the right redesigning steps to leave the SEO ratings of your website unaffected. These steps might improve your SEO as well.
Let’s discuss how you can achieve a smooth transition from the old website to the new one. I have heard some people wondering ‘does update your website help SEO?”. After reading this blog, you will also get insights into how a website redesign can be a way to redesign website SEO as well.
It’s imperative to get expert hands at work: expert website development and revamps the team and a smart digital marketing team, to execute a website redesign in the most effective way.
If you are not sure about initiating a website redesign, read here to know if there is a signal of website revamp.
Steps to Redesign Website Without Losing SEO
Website redesign is not just an opportunity to revamp the digital face of your business. It’s not just about the aesthetic appeal of your website. It’s an occasion to boost SEO, enhance conversion rates, and improve digital marketing as a whole.
1. Take inventory of all pages from your existing website
It simply means to list out every single page on your website as every page is an asset when it comes to Search Engine Optimization. You need to download the URL structure of your website as redesigning may affect it. It is crucial to saving them to avoid any risk of affecting your website ranking.
You can collect website pages in different ways. You can use:
· plug-ins to crawl the website
· your sitemap
· Google’s index of your site
· Google Search Console
This is a significant step in redesigning a website without loosing SEO.
2. Do the redesign on a temporary URL
Copying your site and setting it up on a temporary URL is the best and first approach before initiating a website redesign project. Doing the revamp on the existing site can cause visitor discontent and other major issues in the long run. Once your website is on the new URL, you can start making the planned changes.
With regard to SEO, ensure that your testing/staging website is not indexed by Google. This will help you dodge duplicate content issues. You can accomplish this by:
· Clicking “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” (if using WordPress)
· Clearly adding a “noindex” meta robots directive to each of your pages
· Forbidding all robots from crawling your site via your robots.txt file
Once you are done with the design and content revamp, you just switch the domain and everything will turn out well.
Hiring an experienced website developer is a great idea to get these things done smoothly. A good hosting provider can also help you set up your website on a temporary URL.
3. Test the new website
If you have just ‘reskinned’ your existing pages, there won’t be much to test. Simply updating color schemes and slight HTML changes will not affect your SEO. If you have done an extensive website revamp, it’s prudent to conduct a thorough website redesign SEO audit.
Even before you start the redesign project, you need to do a complete audit of your website to detect and analyze numerous elements such as broken links, features, CSS, etc. This will help you redesign the website without losing SEO.
If you are looking for a professional website auditing service rather than a DIY approach, contact GetMySites today.
4. Do page-by-page 301 redirects
You need to generate 301 redirections to redirect old URLs to new URLs. Some or most of your URLs are changed. For example, the existing page page had this URL https://mywebsite.com/contactus.html and with the new design, you changed it to https://mywebsite.com/contact-us.
You need to do 301 redirects between old and new URLs. This will ensure that both URLs work and you don’t miss SEO benefits grown from your previous URL. If you fail to do it correctly, the search engine will get 404 web pages not found. Doing 301 redirects helps you to redirect the old URL to the new one. This is the procedural way to inform the search engine that the URL has been changed and therefore it will not demote your previous SEO efforts.
5. Switch to the new website
Great! You have done the redesigning, developing, testing, and redirections. Now is the time to jump to the new website all at once with confidence. It’s fine to incremental changes in stages if your website is big. Google recommends doing website switching all at once as it will accelerate crawling.
6. Run Google Webmaster tools
Congrats on going live with the redesigned website! It’s not yet time to relax. There are some more steps to make it proper. You need to ensure that your website is verified with Google Search Console. Login to your webmaster tools to check your website is verified. If it lacks verification, redo it and claim your website.
Google Webmaster tool will help you confirm there are no broken links. Fix broken links, if any, as fast as possible, to avoid penalties from Google. This is a key step to redesign a website without loosing SEO.
7. Check if your website is entirely crawlable
Ensure that Google can correctly index your new website. URL inspection tools in Google Search Console will help you do this. If everything works perfectly, click the REQUEST INDEXING button to speed up the indexing process.
You need to resume the crawler on your website as developers or designers might have stopped the search engines to crawl the site. Use the “Fetch as Google” option under the crawler to check the crawling status. After that click the “Fetch and Render” option. If both options are positive, it signals that your website is entirely crawlable.
8. Check robot.txt
Your robot.txt file might have got corrupted during the redesign. Check the ROBOTS.TXT TESTER option under crawl. If you detect any wrong configuration in robots.txt, corrected it immediately, because it may deny access to search engine crawlers
9. Sitemap submission
You need to optimize and resubmit the XML sitemap to Google and Bing. This is needed as your website now has a new structure. This will help the search engines to index your redesigned website quicker. This will also prevent any unfriendly surprises with your SEO rankings.
10. Monitor the changes
Monitoring changes is something you should never stop doing. A smart website redesigning project needs a website monitoring system in place before and after you to initiate the revamp project. This will help you redesign the website without loosing SEO.
You need to closely watch the SEO rankings of your top keywords. Make use of smart SEO tools to keep track of your keywords. You can manually keep a record of the ranking positions of each keyword. In case if you notice any sizable change in your SEO, put in maximum effort to understand the reason behind it and get a solution. Keep monitoring your website for at least two to three months.
Do not fret if you see considerable changes in the first few days after the redesign. If the situation continues for weeks, it’s time to start worrying and embrace corrective measures. Most of the changes happen due to changing website content in dramatic ways. Drastic content changes are recommended only for pages that you target to improve SEO rankings.
Final thoughts
Be brave enough to execute a website redesign. Following the above-discussed steps is the best way to redesign a website without losing SEO. Integrate modern and mobile-first website design to boost your rankings. Reach out to a leading web design company to guide you throughout.
