Keep SEO in Mind. For Your Website Redesign LOSING

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1 Keep SEO in Mind For Your Website Redesign

2 2 Why? The purpose of a website redesign is to increase the value of your online presence and business reputation in the face of industry competition, and often times to generate leads and sales. In any redesign project, it is important to retain a focus on SEO value and to ensure that all of your SEO elements are smoothly transferred over to your new site through the process. While investing time and budget to boost your website visual attractiveness, usability, and cohesive navigation structure, do not lose sight of SEO. The effort to optimize on the search engines should go hand-in-hand with your website redesign initiatives. How? Research, analyze, and execute according to the following steps: 1. Complete a comprehensive SEO site audit How many of your web pages are being indexed on the search engines? Is Google crawling your site on a frequent basis? Determine baseline metrics for your website by examining the pages Google is crawling and indexing on a regular basis. By checking your cache, you can confirm how frequently the search engines are coming to your site and tracking your high priority and low priority pages.

3 3 2. Identify the pages that bring traffic Which pages have the lowest bounce rate and are most relevant to the searcher s queries? Where are your most engaged visitors spending most of their time? Once you are able to pinpoint the pages of your site that draw the most qualified traffic to pass through your conversion funnel, analyze the keyword phrases that are responsible for this high performance. Sustain this SEO strength by transferring the well performing keywords to the corresponding pages and sections of your new site. At your new online business location, you want to retain all the traffic you were receiving prior to the move. Conducting this process of keyword analysis is imperative to prevent loss of SEO value in the transition from your old site to the new. Next, work to develop a cohesive silo-oriented navigation and linking structure for the new site. To do this, categorize content by section, sub-section, and page with keyword-rich URLs and page titles. Keep in mind that content material should be original and naturally written with 3-5 keywords integrated per page of content. Optimal content is that which can be tied to the theme of your site and effectively tracked and recognized by search engines.

4 4 3. Minimize the impact of URL changes Industry reports have revealed that being able to find what you are looking for easily and quickly is the most highly valued feature of a website redesign. With this in mind, you want to maintain a clear navigation structure with URL changes that are little to none. How do you do this? Secure 301 Redirects A 301 redirect is the most preferred type of redirect in most cases. Search engines will be notified of the permanent address change, just as if you were moving and would notify the post office of your change of address. Complete SEO value of inbound links and indexing history will be preserved and moved to the new location. If you selected a 302 redirect for your site, search engines will expect that your site will return to its old address at some point in the near future. This temporary redirect will keep all of your inbound link credit at the old address, expecting that will continue to be your permanent online home. Manage inbound links Identify which outside links are bringing targeted traffic to your site and boosting your organic ranking. These links need to be preserved just as your internal linking structure needs to be sustained in an appropriate redirect. Simply apply 301 redirects on all pages where the links are directed.

5 5 4. Install a SEO-friendly CMS Preserve and build on the SEO-friendly elements of your site without having to involve your IT team on a frequent basis. When your marketing team has the ability to control and manage content updates, you will be able to add to your SEO value at a swifter pace. Ensure that your CMS does not include any restrictions to URL modifications. This could severely hinder your site s SEO performance. Best practices for URL structure is keep it short, inclusive of keywords, and descriptive of the content piece. What to expect? Execution of your end goals: Create a more usable, well navigated platform to promote your business Increase the visitor engagement level of your user interface Cultivate and preserve existing SEO value to continue to be found on the search engines Ongoing management and maintenance: Quality assurance: Check with your IT team that all elements of your redesign project were carried out from start to finish. Training: Train your website management and marketing team on the new site structure and CMS. SEO Check: Ensure all content updates in the CMS are completed in accordance with your new SEO redesign rules.

6 6 Goals Accomplished 1. A site that has maintained your current SEO value and increased its strength with a new site structure. 2. A site that is foundationally optimized for an increase in SEO value and quality website traffic. 3. A site that is more useable and engaging to boost lead generation, conversions, and closed deals. If you would like to explore further advice and guidance for optimizing your website design, please reach out to us at contact@webmarketing123.com. We will be happy to help you on the right path to your conversion goals. CONNECT WITH US Webmarketing123.com Twitter.com/webmarketing123 Facebook.com/webmarketing123 Linkedin.com/webmarketing123