Do you want to restructure your website but are concerned about losing your SEO rankings? If you want to revamp your website but are afraid of losing your SEO ranking, keep reading. This content was written specifically for you.
There are numerous reasons to audit your website when redesigning it. Understanding your site and how users engage with it is near the top of the list. A website audit is a thorough analysis of your website’s web pages, with many data points showing traffic, performance, and much more.
Because of Losing SEO fear, many website owners are hesitant to update their sites. It’s a good idea to hold on to your ranks after you’ve put so much time and effort into your advanced marketing.
However, people’s tastes change, and the longer you wait to update your site, the more out-of-date it will appear. Similarly, newer plan techniques work on the usefulness and enjoyment of your site for clients on a regular basis.
So upgrading can not only make your site more current and up-to-date, but it can also make your visitors happier. Furthermore, happier guests generate more leads!
In this article, we’ll guide you through our step-by-step process for rebuilding a website without losing SEO rankings.
Initiatives towards a successful site upgrade
1. Take a Backup of your Website
It is always a good idea to create a backup of your old website before beginning a site redesign as a precautionary step. Make a copy of your theme files, plugins, and database. That way, if something goes wrong, you may roll back to a previous version of the website.
Or also you can set up the new website on a temporary URL, Work on the new design, and when it’s finished, simply switch the domain, and everything works perfectly.
Working directly on your live website is not suggested because there are many things that can go wrong when you begin making design modifications. To avoid duplicate content issues, you must ensure that your testing website is not indexed by Google.
2. Audit your Website
Before making changes to your website’s design, it’s important to collect SEO data. This will allow you to compare the performance of your site after you’ve made your adjustments.
Use Google Analytics and Google Search Console to determine which pages of your site are the most important and which are the most visited. Base the development around them since those pages should have the shortest, typeable URLs that are easy to remember and share.
3. Modify or join pages that don’t perform well
Take a look at the pages that didn’t make it to the top. Check to see if they can be modified in any way to produce better outcomes. Sometimes it’s as simple as creating a more appealing copy or changing the prominent image. Rewriting some copy would also go in nicely with the redesign, so don’t overlook it.
4. Make page-by-page 301 redirections to divert old URLs to new URLs
The next step is to perform 301 redirects between old and new URLs. Assume you have a “About Us” page on the old site with the URL “www.yourwebsite.com/url.html.”
If your designer changed the URL during the redesign to “www.yourwebsite.com/newurl.html” it is better to perform suitable 301 redirects to ensure that the two URLs work and you don’t lose SEO benefits gained from your previous URL.
Everything in One SEO’s Redirection Manager extension makes it easy to handle your 301 redirects and 404 problems. All you have to do is copy and paste your old and new URLs into the fields given.
5. Look out for 404 errors
An increase in 404 errors is a highly unwanted side effect of a website makeover process. For starters, it creates a bad user experience because site visitors can’t discover what they’re looking for (despite Google suggesting it in the search results). This could result in a large number of users leaving your page and going to a competitor’s.
You can still reduce your bounce rate by developing a personalized 404 page that includes your most frequently visited sites as well as a few words of apology and possibly a great offer to keep the customer on your website for a bit longer.
6. Optimize Your Content for On-Page Display
After you’ve made your design adjustments, you’ll need to do an on-page review of your content. If you need assistance with optimization, consult this comprehensive SEO tutorial for novices. While designing your website, try to keep the title, headers, meta-descriptions, and body of content consistent.
7. Use a staging site to test your new design
When constructing or redesigning a website, it is best to do so on a staging server. Typically, this is done so that you can audit your website and evaluate its functionality. If you discover any issues, you may quickly correct them before launching your website. An SEO’s worst nightmare is forgetting to check the box, preventing search engines from indexing this site.
If you fail to click this box, your staging site will be indexed as well, and Google may penalize you for duplicate material. That is something you do not want to happen! Make careful to double-check everything before you begin working on your staging site.
8. Launch the Website
It’s finally time to put all of your hard work to the test. Remove your new site from the staging environment and publish it to the live server. Turn off maintenance mode and inform your visitors about the new design. They may be able to assist you by reporting any bugs that may arise.
9. Keep track of the changes
After the redesign is complete, it is critical to pay close attention to Analytics. Make sure to submit the new sitemap for the updated website and check to see if it is properly indexed. Pay attention to the statistics when users look for modified material and adjust to the changes.
Redesigning a website might be difficult for a business. It is a one-of-a-kind difficult process that is fully dependent on the business requirements and the initial concerns with the original website. The redesign must be done carefully, especially if it is a huge website with a lot of content, to avoid harming existing rankings and improving website SEO in the long run.
10. Keep track of your ranks
Finally, having a monitoring system in place before and after a website redesign is highly advised. You can use ranking tools like UberSuggest, SEMRush, Ahrefs, etc., or do it manually by keeping track of your rankings for various keywords. What you want to look for are significant changes in rankings, either positive or negative, so you may take corrective action.
Keep in mind that large fluctuations are usual in the initial few days after the makeover, so don’t panic if you witness a rapid dip or get too excited if you see it again.
A few things to look out for during the auditing process Examine the following carefully:
- Make sure the best-performing content is still working by testing it. This is something that an SEO checklist may help with.
- If you’ve used any redirects, make sure they’re all working.
- Examine the meta descriptions, titles, and headings to ensure they are correct.
- Compare the page speeds of your new and old websites. To evaluate the page speed, you can use a variety of tools, such as this WordPress speed test tool.
- Remove any WordPress plugins that you no longer require. They may cause your website to load slowly.
- Examine the sitemap.xml for any 404 errors. If you find any, fix them.
- Check for cross-browser compatibility. The simplest approach to do this is to open the same website in several browsers and see if it loads properly.
- Make certain that your website is fully responsive on mobile devices.
- Copy the tracking codes to the new website design to avoid losing any vital data.
Final Thought
Don’t be frightened to revamp your website; if you follow the methods outlined above, your SEO will not suffer. Introducing a modern design that is faster, mobile-friendly, and easy to use without too much clutter, on the other hand, will almost certainly enhance your rankings and increase visitors to your website.
Think about redesigning after reading this article, what are you waiting for quick contact with a Web Design Agency like SacredThemes to ensure that the process goes smoothly and that you don’t lose any of the ranks that you worked so hard to achieve.