You are in process of redesigning your website with brand new design, structure, and pages. And want to make sure about the steps to follow that do not impact SEO after launch.
Or just switching to another brand-new domain because of one of the following reasons
- You have added new services to your portfolio and the current domain name has become irrelevant.
- You have changed the service area and the location specific domain has become invalid.
- You have found the domain that matches your brand name better.
- You want to scrap current brand for some reason and want to launch a completely new brand name.
- You have found the shorter domain name which wasn’t earlier available.
In any case, if you have implemented SEO on your existing domain, then It might be tough to move an existing or launch a new website without negatively impacting your keyword rankings. When implementing such adjustments, even large, established firms can lose up to 70% of their organic traffic if not migrated correctly.
That, however, does not have to happen to you. We strongly suggest you reach out to the top nearby SEO Consultant to assess your current SEO and plan the successful migration for you. Stay tuned for the best practices of relaunching a new website and/ or to the new domain without affecting your rankings.
Website Redesigning?
A website overhaul entails more than just a visual makeover. It also allows you to change the essential structure of your website to make it easier to navigate for visitors as well as blend your new ideas with existing marketing strategy.
When it comes to design user experience, a basic guideline to remember is that complicated and fancy animated design is rarely good. For your visitors, you want it to be as easy and user-friendly as possible. You can make sure of all such things during a major website revamp and relaunch.
This is an excellent moment to assess your site thoroughly, determine your objectives, and formulate a redesign strategy.
Sometimes It can be tough to know when you need a revamp of your website. But according to a 2020 survey, these are some of the top reasons why and when you need to decide to redesign your website-
- Low conversion rates (80.8 percent)
- High bounce rates (65 percent)
- Need a better user experience (61 percent)
- Not all gadgets are responsive (53.8 percent)
- Web Page is no longer active (38.5 percent)
- It’s not search engine friendly (23.1 percent)
SEO Checklist to Avoid Big Drops in SEO traffic whilst revamping and or transferring existing site to a new domain
Before beginning the redesigning process, a site owner sometimes neglects to consider SEO difficulties. This is a major blunder and will cost you a bomb. Many of your past SEO strategies won't work on your new site unless you follow a few things before proceeding.
SEO CHECKLIST:
- Back up your existing website fully along with database
- Backup onpage SEO
- Examine existing copywriting and identify the pages that are no longer valid
- Gather benchmark data
- Use temporary URL or Staging Server URL for designing, migrating, and testing a new website.
- Consider optimizing Information Architecture whilst redesigning.
- Optimize the outdated content where needed.
- Put together URL redirection plan and do it cautiously.
- Target improving page speed.
- Ensure migration of Page Tile, Description, and Heading Tags intact as possible on the new website
- Review and make sure both external and internal links are working.
- Assess website responsiveness and cross-browser compatibility.
- Fully test website once again upon completion to go live.
- After going live to the new domain, make sure to verify new domain property with the same ID used for Google Search Console
- Setup change of address in Google Search Console
- Submit the new updated XML Sitemap to Google Search Engine
- Work on Off page SEO and update new domain link where applicable.
Backup your existing website
Before making any modifications to your site, you should have a copy made by your developer. So that you can refer it back when in need to perhaps find an old link or meta of a landing page etc. to fix SEO even after going live with the new website. Back up your data to a separate staging URL. Remember to keep this staging URL hidden from the search engines.
Backup On-Page SEO
Must backup all pages Meta titles, description, heading tags, internal links, image tags, page URLs, etc., all important onpage SEO items.
Examine all the links and metadata of your existing website. This will aid in the detection of broken internal or external links, the marking of outdated content pages, and the examination of the title tag, image tags, etc. You need to make sure all of these are safely migrated to a new website with possible better fixes / optimization.
Examine existing copywriting and identify the pages to scrap that are no longer valid
Many websites' organic visibility is fueled by content. 82% of marketers employ content marketing, and it is the foundation of many successful businesses.
A better responsive website redesign can boost your content efforts to new heights, but first you must have a clear image of what is your SEO standing. Using your statistics, conduct a full content audit to establish your most important pages that derive good traffic, determine which pages are irrelevant or obsolete that needs update, and determine which pages should be redirected or merged with other pages.
This is an ideal opportunity to delete some of your outdated pages. Is there any information on your website about expired promotional offers? Are there any landing pages on your site that are no longer in use? Make a list of them and cross them off your list of things to get rid of.
But be cautious. Even if a page is no longer active, it may still have good backlinks pointing and deriving organic traffic. Before eliminating any page, be sure this isn't the case. If an old page is still receiving a lot of traffic, updating it makes more sense instead of removing it. If you decide to remove any page, make sure you are redirecting that old URL to the relevant page of the new website, so you don’t lose the SEO.
Gather Benchmark Data
Gather and save essential website statistics in advance, such as your site's focus keywords, pages ranking on SERP, organic traffic, indexed pages, conversion rate, and revenue. This information will help you understand how well your new site performs once it goes live.
Tip: To analyze this data, you'll need to utilize your implemented Google Analytics and Search Console. Consider using a premium service such as SEMrush to get some meaningful site audit reports.
Use temporary URL or Staging Server URL for designing and testing a new website
In most cases, the development team will keep your site in a temporary URL during the pre-launch phase. It allows for more effective teamwork. However, search engines must be prohibited from accessing this development version.
Tip: You can set up robot.txt to prevent your site from being indexed.
Information Architecture should be optimized whilst redesigning
Over 60% of consumers say they abandon a website because of poor navigation. Even though website navigation and information architecture (IA) are not the same thing, your IA should guide the structure of your site navigation.
The way you organize content in your sitemap is referred to as information architecture (IA). Your website's navigation is how you structure it.
On the first visit, 38% of consumers will examine the layout and navigational links of a website.
Optimize the outdated content
You should have a decent idea of what content you want to keep after performing your content audit. If you put in the time and effort to do your audit, you'll almost certainly have identified some places for improvement for some of your finest pages.
A website redesign is a great way to freshen outdated information and breathe new vitality into it. By itself, this method can boost organic traffic by up to 106 percent.
Put together URL redirection plan and work on it cautiously
The structure of your website will be altered whilst revamping your website. Some pages will be relocated, while others will be removed entirely.
In the world of SEO, tiny tweaks can have significant impact. According to 60% of marketers, SEO and content marketing are their primary sources of leads.
You'll lose not only your referral traffic, but also the page and domain authority that those backlinks have already built up if you don't use URL redirects in a better way. Make sure your SEO / Development team focus enough and work on all existing URLs without missing any single URL.
If possible, keep the URL structure same as is on current website to avoid major SEO keywords ranking drop for the important pages.
Focus on improving Page Speed
The importance of page speed cannot be overstated. Everyone has experienced the frustration of waiting for a website to load for an eternity, and you know what happens when that happens: users leave and hunt for information elsewhere.
People nowadays expect things to happen faster - thanks to technology and dealing with a website is no exception. If a website takes more than 4 seconds to load, 25% of visitors abandon it, and a one-second delay results in a 16 percent loss in consumer satisfaction.
This is something you should think about from the beginning of your redesign, and you should make it a priority for your developer.
Ensure Page Tile, Description, and Heading Tags are intact on the new website
Do you have adequate title tags and descriptions on all of your site's pages? Are you making proper use of heading tags? These are some things to keep in mind when creating new pages.
Tip: A title tag should be between 50 and 60 characters long and include keywords relevant to the page. In SERPs, the meta description appears beneath the blue link. In 160 characters, it should offer a succinct summary of the page. Any description that is longer than this will be cut off.
Review both External and Internal Links
It's a good idea to double-check that all of your external links are referring to the correct locations (i.e. not broken). Also, as your URLs change, double-check that your internal links are still working properly.
Assess website responsiveness and cross-browser compatibility
In the mobile first era, you need to make sure the new site design is fully responsive before going live. Checking if the site is responsive is one of the most crucial tasks in the redesign process. The new design should be tested on possible all devices to make sure the site is properly accessible for the majority of browsers and devices.
Firefox offers a "Responsive Design Mode" that you may use to see how your website will appear and act on various screen sizes and devices. Firefox should be used to access your website. Then select Menu > Tools > Responsive Design Mode from the drop-down menu. Use the Ctrl + Shift + M (Cmd + Opt + M in Mac) keyboard shortcut instead. There are some automated tools available as well that allows to test the site rapidly.
Fully test website once again upon completion to go live
Internal links account for 0.27 percent of broken links on the internet, whereas external connections account for 1.37 percent. Whilst testing your website after a redesign, you must revisit all links before launch and reassess all the points above to make sure the new site launch does not hurt your SEO big way and eventually improvise rankings and gain the authority back if it’s a new domain.
Make sure you launch your new site only after enough testing on all fronts, because the flaws might have serious impacts.
Verify new domain property and setup change of address
Now that your new website is launched, you should right away verify new domain property with the same ID / account registered at Google Search Console and also setup change of address.
Submit the new updated sitemap
Your website's XML sitemap serves as a road map. It's important to submit the updated sitemap to Google and other search important search engines you focus.
You can prepare the sitemap manually by adding each URL of your new site, or you can use an SEO plugin like Yoast to handle it for you if it’s a WordPress website design.
Google's crawlers may completely ignore your site if your XML sitemap is incorrect.
Continue working on Offpage SEO:
Your SEO consultant must have a plan ready beforehand for the Off-page SEO update if it was implemented for your current domain. You probably want to quickly update the new domain for important social sites from for better brand recognition and discuss with your SEO consultant for the rest of the submitted or new backlinks action plan to improve new domain’s authority.
Final Words
After you've completed everything and your site has gone live, keep an eye on how your new site's organic traffic and rankings improves over the next few months. By looking at this, you can see if any additional optimization for your new site is required.
Your site will undergo numerous significant modifications because of a redesign or migration. Even if you're cautious and observe all the regulations, you will notice that your search rank has slipped a little initially. Don't worry. Keep investigating the data to see if you missed out on anything. Also, make sure to adhere to all the items in the checklist. You'll be up and running in no time and will also be able to see your improved rankings in couple of months or sooner.
If you’re someone who’s looking to redesign or revamp your website and are worried about your SEO rankings, we at Continuum Digital can help you safely do the same without hurting your SEO and reach. While doing all this, we make sure our expertise in the field only benefits your project but also helps you with ways to scale up.