Website redesign SEO checklist: Retaining and improving SEO – Merely having a website is not enough for a business these days if it wants to contribute to its bottom line positively. Gaining an edge over competitors in an increasingly competitive market should be every business’s priority. Thus, optimizing the website or online store thoroughly and consistently is necessary to rank higher in search results and drive more organic traffic.
Most businesses rely on a leading SEO company Dubai, to carry out website optimization for Google and other popular search engines. Unlike paid search, SEO is a long-term and almost never-ending process that a business has to conduct to keep driving quality traffic to its website and boost its rankings. Implementing fresh SEO strategies is essential for a business to stay competitive.
It is a no-brainer that website redesign is an obvious step that businesses need to take to preserve valuable traffic and site rankings and improve the same. However, redesigning a site at frequent intervals negatively affects the flow of organic traffic and SEO.
Website Redesign Process
Driving qualified traffic to the site or online store is the ultimate goal of a business, as it increases the possibilities of sales. People have too many options these days, which is why holding their attention for a long period is challenging for a business in every sector.
So, refreshing or upgrading the look and feel of a website from time to time has a positive impact on organic traffic growth and SEO rankings. Avoiding giving priority to the SEO checklist during the web redesign process can cause you to lose your existing traffic as well as rankings.
Over 50 per cent of users of a brand’s products agree that website design plays an instrumental role in driving them to the site, retaining them and choosing the business over its competitors. You must remember that even well-designed sites have to undergo a makeover after a certain time. It is essential for a website to stay up-to-date and meet visitors’ expectations.
SEO Checklist to Give Priority to when Redesigning Your Site
Encountering some typical SEO problems is inevitable when you opt to redesign your business website. So, it is prudent to have a team of SEO experts by your side. Do so to remain organized during the web redesign process and manoeuvre well so as to keep potential issues that affect rankings at bay.
Perform Website Analysis
Take good note of the current performance of your website prior to web redesign. Besides checking the rankings of your web pages for crucial business-specific keywords, you must evaluate metrics and KPIs. You will have a clear knowledge of the condition of your site, what’s working and what you need to change by redesigning your website.
Ensure the Older Version of Your Site Remains Live
It can be beneficial if you ask the SEO company Dubai you hire to keep your old website live, if possible, on a private web address. Ensuring a search engine crawler cannot access the old site is imperative. Indeed, HTTP authentication is great, still having the option to refer to the older version of your site whenever needed.
Save Old Site’s Crawling Information
Saving the crawling data of the previous version of your site that’s available on a temporary URL is vital. It becomes hassle-free to evaluate the crawl statistics of the older site anytime there is a requirement if you save crawl data.
Old URLs Redirection
You must prioritize properly redirecting all old URLs to the new URLs during website redesign. Checking whether the implementation of the 301 redirects on the redesigned web version is done correctly must be your priority upon the completion of the web redesign process.
Refrain from Changing Anything in URL Structures
You must not make any changes in URL structures and the names of web pages while website redesigning. The possibility of the occurrence of SEO problems will decrease once you finish the site redesign.
Audit and Modify Web Content
Improving content on your web pages is indispensable when redesigning your website. However, you need not make significant changes to content that has performed well and earned lots of backlinks. You will have the option to tweak your web content after the search engines index and rank it higher.
Besides the ones mentioned above, updating backlinks, XML sitemap, monitoring organic traffic and SEO rankings are necessary. Choose the best SEO professionals for website design and redesign flawlessly. Making this informed decision can help you take the right steps during web redesign, helping you boost organic traffic growth and your site’s search engine rankings remarkably.