When the time comes for a redesign of your business website, it’s important that the project is handled the right way.
The whole point of doing a website update is to increase its usability both for you and your users.
Unfortunately, many redesigns don’t wind up accomplishing that because of mistakes that affect SEO.
As important as your site redesign is for your business, it’s essential that you avoid the mistakes that will hurt your site rather than help it.
Work with an experienced website redesign service that can do your site update and avoid the mistakes that could negatively affect your business.
1. Forgetting A New Site Map
The sitemap is an essential part of every web design as it helps indexers find and index all your pages.
It’s critical that you generate a new sitemap after a website redesign and submit it to the search engines as the most updated version of your site to prevent indexers from continually crawling the old site.
2. Duplicating Meta Titles and Descriptions
Many website updates are done to correct site problems and further optimize the site for better SEO.
Forgetting the meta title and description of every page is bad; however, using the same title and description as an easy way to just get it done can be worse.
Website redesign services should create a unique, optimized meta title and description for every page.
3. Not Transferring Valuable Content Correctly
To maintain SEO on content pages from the old site after a website redesign, it’s essential that all content be redirected correctly.
Each blog post, video post, white paper, and more requires its own page just like on the original site.
That page can have a redirect to the original page; however, a directory-like listing of titles that all redirect en masse to the old site only tell the search engine that there is no content on your new site, reducing SEO there.
4. Not Transferring All Pages
Failing to transfer all the pages on the original website without actually removing them from the site and sitemap leaves too many places for 404's to pop up.
Even the most inconsequential pages should be redirected from the old site to the new to avoid reductions in SEO that can occur if your site has too many 404's
5. Poor Image Compression
Another optimization mistake that tends to get overlooked on old sites and then forgotten during website updates is image compression.
Whether transferring images or adding new ones, efficient image compression is essential for good site speed and great SEO.
6. Not Including Social Tracking
Monitoring what your new website is doing after an update is important for revealing problems and tracking the reach of your content.
By embedding social tracking codes in your pages, website redesign services can find who is sharing your posts and where, which can help you make better marketing decisions.
7. Forgetting to Update the URL in Google Analytics
Believe it or not, one of the more common causes of a sudden lack of website performance or drop in SEO after a website update is due simply to the fact that nobody updated the URL in Google Analytics.
Make sure the application is tracking the right website before you launch the updated version.
Website Redesigns - Not the End of SEO
Like everything else in web design and marketing, there is a right way to do something and a wrong way.
When it comes to website redesigns, it’s the little details that make a successful site update without the loss of SEO that can negatively impact your business.
Avoid these common yet easily avoided mistakes by working with website redesign services that can handle your site update the right way!