WARNING: Website Redesign Projects can damage your SEO

Considering a website makeover project? Or are you in the middle of your website redesign? There are mainly two aspects that needs careful attention and as a website owner one needs to be cautious about:

1. Website redesign should involve SEO practises: SEO should be a part of any website redesign effort from the onset of the entire project. However, in most of the cases SEO assistance is taken on the project not in time or no help at all. Rankings, organic traffic, and organic conversions usually dip down in such cases.

2. Huge SEO investment loss: Amidst website redesign a cautious attempt needs to be made on not to damage the existing optimisation. The company’s s significant SEO expenditure has been wasted. Repairing the SEO damage – and re-building portions of the website you recently published – may cost a lot of money.

WEBSITE REDESIGN IS INTO RHETORICAL OVERDRIVE:

The design and redesign of website is moving at breakneck speed. COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdowns sparked a boom in internet shopping and creation of new domains saw a boom. And this isn’t a one-time occurrence. Even sceptics and business purchasers have learned to appreciate the ease.

The impact on the web world has been enormous. According to Adobe, COVID increased retail online sales by $183 billion in B2C. According to McKinsey & Company, 80 percent of B2B transactions are completed online. Business, brands, companies and web owners are improving their models to integrate new internet services such as BOPIS in order to profit (buy online; pick-up in store). To compensate for a drop in tradeshows and live meetings, they’re also adding video, pictures, and new material to their websites. All of this has resulted in an increase in website makeover initiatives.

Now, you might be wondering what do all these changes have to do with Search Engine Optimization? Well, the answer is simple, Everything! Let’s try and understand what bascially is website redesign project. Here are two fundamental categories to consider:

A Complete Rebuild/Redesign

A complete rebuild entails modifications to front-end and back-end development, design, content, and/or navigation in general. If the website is outdated, needs a complete rebrand, is built on an outdated platform, no longer meets customer needs, is not responsive, or does not meet the organization’s marketing objectives, a complete redesign is usually done.

A ‘Cosmetic Makeover’
A Cosmetic Redesing of the website simply means the creation of new page template designs, which may necessitate text modifications to match the new layout. Redesigns that are just cosmetic usually only alter a few areas of the site. A cosmetic redesign is usually done to refresh a corporate logo, enhance readability (e.g., by using larger fonts), introduce new goods and services, or change the style and content to better communicate to new market segments.

The Big Picture: SEO and Website Redesign

An SEO campaign’s goal is to get a website’s strategic pages to rank well in Google for related queries. When ranking a webpage, Google’s sophisticated algorithm takes into account a variety of criteria, including content relevancy and quality, pictures, metadata, user-friendliness, and inbound links, to mention a few. So, if a URL that was ranking and producing organic traffic is changed or removed without respect for SEO factors, your rankings for that page might actually vanish from Google.

Also, If you change your website’s navigation and hierarchy, a vital page will be hidden lower in the hierarchy. That page may be seen as less essential by Google spiders. If you change the URL of a strategic page, don’t forget to set up a 301 redirect to the new address. All of the inbound links that made the previous page a search engine powerhouse will stay with it and will not be transferred to the new URL. With the links gone, Google is left with a whole new page to rank, which will take time and effort. Remove target keywords from a strategic page’s content, reduce the word count, change the title tag, and/or change the page’s general message and focus. These modifications have the potential to dramatically lower rankings.

Fill in the Blanks
-When do you plan your new website’s architecture and hierarchy? Very early on – and SEO must be taken into account at that time.

-When do you put the finishing touches on new URLs? Most likely in the midst of the project – and SEO should be considered at that point.

-When do you start working on fresh material and when do you finish it? Most likely in the middle or late stages of the project, and SEO should be considered at that point.

SEO Action Plan for Website Redesign

Here’s what you’ll need to do to keep your new website’s SEO strength. For each URL, collect all of your current keyword rankings, organic search traffic, and conversion statistics. If feasible, go back a year and split your data down monthly. Use this information as a benchmark to see how well your new site performs when it goes live. Make sure your new site’s strategic SEO pages are clearly recognised from the start. This will very certainly necessitate new keyword and competitor research.

Create a sitemap for the new site early on that contains every page, the whole hierarchy of all pages, the final name for each page, and the final URL routes for each page, with SEO feedback. This will aid SEO while also making the new site easier to navigate and grow when new material is added. Provide comprehensive SEO inputs to content authors before they begin writing.

Provide SEO best practises for responsive design, layout, and page performance to designers. Large, unoptimized pictures are frequently the cause of slow website loading, which is terrible for SEO and user experience. Confirm that developers are taking SEO into account across a wide variety of technical aspects. The relevance of HTTPS, canonicals, render-blocking resources, and robots.txt configuration are all discussed. When it comes to new URLs, 301 redirects must be put up with utmost caution, as they guide Google crawlers from the old website to the new page.