Designing the website requires creativity. But redesigning a website requires too much planning and diligence. In a new website, there is always an opportunity to enhance SEO, a ranking of the sites, Rate of Conversion of the leads, and other activities of digital marketing. Sometimes there has been a chance of SEO disaster if the proper steps aren’t taken to smooth the transition from the old website to the new website.
In this blog, we will go through a detailed step on How to Maintain the SEO of a Website while Redesigning it.
Look into Everything
This is something big you are looking into it. You might make a big mistake without looking at so many factors, which affect the SEO of your old website, while you redesigning your website. You can save from so many issues by the look into it from the start.
The moment you decided to redesign a website, from that moment start investing in SEO monitoring tools. From this tool, you can keep eye on all of your SEO concepts.
- Speed
- Keyword
- number of backlinks
- Domain authority
- Safety (Viruses, Malware)
- Spam score
- Organic traffic from search engines
Keep URL intact
Your old website store URLs that you shouldn’t forget to store when you redesigning your website. You can use these old URLs for reference on the new website. Without old URLs, you might lose your years of hard work through generated audience and reputation with the search engines.
A proper way to start is by storing any broken links and existing redirects on your website. If the URL will change, there has to be a change in the redirect chain. This process will affect website performance and cause the SEO of the website and the loss of ranking. Also, check out Sapphire Software Solutions has been recognized as the best SEM Agencies in 2021 by DesignRush.
Not Work on the live website
The most important thing to keep in mind when making changes to your old website. Do not do any kind of upgrade to your website while it is live.
Either down the website, while you are making an upgrade because people who attempt to visit your website will be irritated. In another way, you set up the new website on another URL and swap it with the original when your website will be done.
Redesigning the website is a long process, and mistakes always there, So it is easier to not have an issue on the website while it is life.
404 Pages
The 404 pages not found message is an important part of any website redesign because sometimes pages go down suddenly or links do not work. A nicely designed 404 page will help the users and search engines to find their way back to the information they are searching for, or other places on your website.
Track of backlinks
You can collect usage data of your backlinks, and the best way to move those backlinks to your new website. Then make sure pages with remaining your accumulated backlinks have 301 redirects.
Page titles and meta description
You need to make sure all pages on the website have page titles and meta descriptions. You can transfer all these titles and meta descriptions from the old website. If your old website meta descriptions and titles aren’t up to the mark, a redesign of the website is a great chance to focus on generating more User and search-engine-friendly meta content.
Sitemaps
When you launch your new website it is a nice idea to have two complete sitemaps. HTML and XML sitemaps. HTML Sitemap for search engine and user, and XML sitemap only for search engine. An XML sitemap helps Google Crewel and index your website speedy way. You can submit the XML sitemap to Google, Yahoo, and Bing through their webmaster tools.
Broken links
You need to use QA tools to ensure that there is no broken link on any page of the website. Even if you’ve set up 301 redirects for all your previous content, Sometimes Problems can still come If some of the old pages accept real URLs instead of relative to real URLs.
Conclusion
In the end, what are the other ways to make sure the website SEO stays intact during the website redesign? The answer is Consistently review, Monitor the website, Update, and analyze during and after the website redesign. SEO is not a one-day process, it requires constant work on the website and continuous Supervision. You need to save old information, make changes to the website, continues to monitor and audit your SEO, and make an update to your content in specific time periods to improve SEO ranking and traffic on the website. So, these all are methods we can follow for a better outcome.
