Design trends keep evolving, and websites must keep up. This makes redesigning your website almost inevitable at one point of time or another. But how do you know that a redesign project won’t leave your SEO in a bad shape?
Though redesigning can easily mess up with your search engine rankings, there are simple steps you can take to prevent it. Here, we share with you the top trade secrets of leading SEO Agencies in New York to preserve SEO rankings.
It’s time to get cracking!
Try to Keep Your Original URL Structure Intact
One of the easiest ways to minimize SEO losses due to redesign is to follow your original URL structure as much as possible for your new website. This means that except for newly added pages, don’t create new URLs for your website. It’s also wise to not change your sitemap and content hierarchy unless absolutely necessary. SEO Agencies in New York recommend that you use the original structure, flow and URLs as much as possible.
Choose Your Redirects Wisely
Whether you had to worry about redirects earlier or not, they become a reality after a website redesign. This happens due to the simple reason that many links from the old website become defunct after a re-launch. As any SEO Agency in New York will tell you, redirects are a way to manage broken links in your new website.
But not knowing when to use which kind of redirect can cost you dearly. Here are a few simple rules to follow:
1. If you are changing permalink structure, create a spreadsheet of all links that will be broken.
2. Fix only what’s broken – nothing more. The less changes you make, the better it is for your SEO.
3. Use 301 redirects to transfer broken URLs to inbound links. This can help you to avoid 404 errors (Page Not Found errors).
4. Use 302 redirects sparingly – only when updating a page, for example.
Compare Past and Present SEO Audits
How do you know whether you have lost any SEO rankings or not? Simple, do a before-and-after audit of your websites.
We have seen businesses going gung-ho on their new design, only to realize later that their SEO has crashed. Similarly, many businesses mistakenly believe that their SEO is dipping after redesign. In reality, they might have remained the same or even improved!
Avoid the pitfalls of blind guesswork and take out 10 minutes of your time to run an audit instead. Save the audit report of your previous website for reference. Once the new website is redesigned and launched, compare the key indicators in both, like:
- Website Traffic
- Search Engine Rank for Specific Pages
- Rank for Specific Keywords
- Loading Speed
- Bounce Rate
- Average Duration per Session
- Top Performing Pages
- Least Performing Pages
- List of Technical Errors
- No. of Backlinks
Additionally, top SEO Agencies in New York crawl the meta-content of your previous website and keep it handy. Use it as it is or improve it before using it on your new website. Trust us when we say this – it will spare you those SEO nightmares later on.
Update the Information Outside of Your Website
When revamping your website, it is not enough to manage internal linkages. You must also update your URLs (as applicable and necessary) on:
- Social Media
- Google My Business
- Directories and Listings
- Email Signatures
- Business Cards
- Third Party Backlinks
- Presentations & Brochures
Make these changes uniformly and across every external platform that you can think of.
In some cases, it is not enough to just replace an old link. To keep your SEO and traffic intact, write to your customers, partners, and general audience. Inform them about the change and urge them to visit your website in its new avatar. Run a press-release or a social media campaign if you think that the stakes are too high and that you’ve the budget for it.
Conclusion
There you go. Use these tactics used by leading SEO Agencies in New York to stay ahead of the SEO challenges in redesigning your website – thank us later!
Looking for a Website Development and SEO Agency that can reboot your website experience without killing the ranks? Look no further. Agency Couch is here to take care of it all through our unique partnership model. We stay on top of design, development and SEO trends and get the very best delivered to you. Visit https://agencycouch.com or write to us at getintouch@agencycouch.com to know more.
