Over the past few years, we all have understood the importance of having a website for representing an online business. However, when it comes to websites, we cannot have the same design all the way from start to finish. It needs to be updated and should be according to the preference of the customer. Well, you might think that all you need to do is to redesign the website without affecting other parts of your marketing – wrong! A website redesign can impact the search engine optimization (SEO) efforts you have put on your website over time.
So, what to do? Well, knowing about the effects of a website redesign on SEO can be a helpful thing for you. That’s because knowing about the issues can help you easily identify them and take the proper precautions.
Let’s get down to this write-up and have a better understanding of the impacts of a website redesign on SEO.
What Is Website Redesign?
A new website may have a significant impact on your search engine optimization (SEO) if it falls into one of two fundamental categories:
Visual Touch-Ups
A cosmetic touch-up is only a superficial modification in appearance. The framework of your site will not be altered, and you will not be reorganizing or removing pages. As a general rule, you’ll want to update your website layout to improve user experience, replace low-quality pictures with better ones and modify your content.
Rebuilding from the Ground Up
Essentially, a thorough site rebuild is a full revamp. All of the content on your site may be scrapped, and you could start from scratch or restructure your site’s navigation and the site map.
How Does Redesign Impact a Website’s SEO?
While redesigning your site, you might deal with many pitfalls, but the other part of the snag is it also affects your SEO. You must avoid the obstacles that can harshly hinder your SEO efforts. As mentioned, redesigning is expensive but more cost-effective than bleeding money yearly with an unproductive website.
Various components are altered during a redesign, including code structure and pages. If redesigning isn’t done adequately, it can negatively affect the website’s SEO and long-term growth. For many companies, SEO is the most powerful tool to bring website traffic organically; damage to SEO during a redesign is destructive.
Issues That Come Up in Redesign
The most typical changes that can be problematic during a redesign could be:
- Website content will be removed or changed; no chance of ranking! Moreover, the very content might impact the website’s hierarchy.
- URLs and internal link structure could change: all the hard work your website’s link-building specialist did could turn into scums in minutes.
- Page-level optimization may also change, and technical issues on the website might crop up.
- Domain and subdomain names might change, and the protocols can transform.
It goes without saying that the pitfalls mentioned above can yield trouble to your website’s rankings and organic traffic.
How Are Redesign and SEO Related?
Cosmetic adjustments in your website have minimal to no impact on search engine rankings. Updating your logo, correcting a few mistakes or making other minor changes won’t have much of an effect if any at all.
In addition, if you make more major adjustments, your SEO will suffer. Rebuilding a site will most probably result in the loss of most, if not all, of the SEO advantages that the old site had.
For a variety of causes, this may occur. Google’s algorithm will see a page differently if you move it around in the site’s navigation. To put it another way, a page that Google previously judged significant and so worthy of a high ranking may suddenly be deemed trivial and therefore unworthy of consideration. In the same way, if you modify a URL’s organic traffic, you’re going to lose that traffic and your search engine rank.
What To Do Before Redesigning Your Website To Protect SEO
You should always come up with a clear idea of what your website will seem like after it is redesigned. Having a clear vision allows you to think about SEO.
There are a few things to keep in mind:
- Are the keywords you aim to rank for the same as the ones you already have? Can you think of anything better?
- Keeping the keywords’ content is up to you. Do you want to make any changes to it?
- Is your website’s structure optimal for search engine optimization? Could it be better?
Prior to rebuilding your website, you should do SEO analysis. It will assist you in formulating a plan and ensuring that you don’t overlook anything that might jeopardize your SEO efforts.
How To Redesign a Website Without Hampering SEO
Rebuilding your website shouldn’t neglect SEO. Without a doubt, everyone should be thinking about it from the beginning. SEO data should be gathered before any development starts so that you may compare the performance of your new site to that of its predecessor. Invest some time in new SEO studies before moving on to rival scouting.
Consider SEO while designing the site’s new structure. This entails putting up a logical, user-friendly layout. The same is actually right for page titles and URLs. You may be tempted to reuse some of the keywords you used earlier for your new site’s text. This is a blunder you must avoid. Begin over with your SEO. Although many keywords will likely stay the same, you don’t want to lose out on any fresh terms that might help you rise in the search engine results pages.
Here are a few more things to consider during the process of website redesigning:
Pay Attention While Deleting Information
To avoid losing search engine rankings during a website makeover, do not remove pages containing keywords that are helping your site rank highly. Additionally, material may be improved but cannot be wiped clean.
Consider Other Routes
When URLs change, redirections should be the only element that comes to mind! SEO relies heavily on redirects. In the absence of it, you run the danger of losing both organic and backlink-derived traffic. Users that click on a link connecting to the old URL will be instantly routed to the new one using a redirect. It will not bring in any issue with the flow of traffic!
In addition, if at all feasible, refrain from making any changes to the URL structure of your site. To remove pages, 301 redirects (permanent) are a preferable option if the content is the same. You risk being fined if you have the same redirections on the same page!
Don’t Go Overboard When Removing Elements
When a website is being redesigned, certain features must be left in place so that the SEO is not affected. Title & meta-descriptions are critical to SEO. Please don’t mess with it if it was already optimized. Obviously, if you want to alter the whole content and the primary keyword of your website, you may do so using this option. Afterward, you’ll need to tweak the title tag & meta description to reflect your changes. An effective SEO should include this as one of its foundational tenets.
Other aspects must be preserved unless the page or website undergoes significant revisions:
- An image’s ALT property
- Your pages should have a proper structure
- It is important to have internal linkages
Implement SEO in Your Back Office
If you somehow neglect this step, you might find yourself kicking yourself later. Whether you’re changing your CMS or not, the back office is the ideal place to start when optimizing your site for search engine results. SEO plug-ins are available for several CMS platforms to aid you with basic SEO adjustments.
Consider the Possibilities
In light of the established SEO you may lose, you may ask whether changing your website is worthwhile. In the end, the prime focus should be to have a current, user-friendly website that matches your company’s identity and goals. A few minor tweaks may be all that’s required if your present site meets all of those criteria. However, if it doesn’t, you might want to contemplate a rebuild, despite the possible negative influence on your search engine rankings.
Redesigning your website might be a huge chance for development. Creating a site having SEO in mind from the ground up may help you attain rankings you never thought possible. Google’s continuous algorithm updates ensure that no website’s place in the search results is everlasting.
Conclusion
As of now, you have read enough about the website redesign process and how it can be impactful toward SEO. Well, these pointers are proven to greatly help businesses that are redesigning their SEO-optimized website. In case you are not sure about the same, then it is better to get in touch with the experts. We hope you’ve found this blog helpful to your future redesign efforts!