SEO: Check the Checklist Before, During, & After the Website Redesign

Many website owners (entrepreneurs) still think that SEO is a one-time job. Unfortunately, the reality is just the opposite. For example, during the redesign of a website, multiple facets can be altered. If not properly handled the changes, it may have an adverse effect on the website’s SEO which may ultimately slow down the long-term growth of the site.

On the other hand if done correctly, redesigning a website can boost your SEO effort.

In this edition of my post, we will run through a top ten list for webmasters on how to revamp a website without disturbing SEO.

1) List all URLs from the existing website

URL restructuring is very common in the website redesigning. It is important therefore to keep a backup of the existing site for further reference. For example, new URLs can possibly impact your website ranking. So in that case, you can always check back the old URL to find the root cause behind the drop in rank.

Solution:

Plugins like Yoast SEO for WordPress can be useful to get the URLs. You can use the XML sitemap file(s) to get a trace of the URLs. I also suggest you take a look at tools like Screaming Frog SEO Spider. Keep a full backup of the old site in your computer’s hard drive or on any removable disk.

2) Setup a beta site

Do not start the redesign work on your existing live website. It can cause issues for your site visitors which in turn will give you problems in the long run. Instead copy your existing site and set it up as a temporary web directory. Make sure the beta version is robots excluded completely. Now you can start making changes to the beta site. Switch the domain once all done.

Solution:

If you can do all these on your own then good otherwise, either you can take help from your developer or ask your hosting company to do it for you. Remember, a website migration job has to handle with delicacy to protect none other than you from unexpected issues in the future.

3) Test thoroughly the new website

After you copied your existing website and done changes to the beta site, now is the time to do a thorough checkup. In this process, you should look at multiple aspects of your website including functionality check, usability check, browser and device compatibility check, etc.

Solution:

You can also use a tool like XENU’s Link Sleuth to find all the broken links on your beta site besides manual testing.

4) Do URL mapping

The next step is to do redirects between old and new URLs (if at all REQUIRED). Keeping the URL structure as it is will be the best way, however, sometimes is not possible. In that scenarios, implementation of proper 301 redirects from old URLs to their corresponding new versions will ensure no sudden loss of SEO benefits.

Do it without fail, else the search engine will get a 404 page not found error at the indexed web address. By doing 301 redirects, you will send the message to search engines that the old URL does not exist anymore and consider the new one instead permanently. Accordingly, search engines like Google will follow your direction about URL redirection while ranking pages on SERP.

Solution:

You can add redirects using the .htaccess file. For example,

Redirect a Single Page with .htaccess

Redirect 301 /oldpage.html http://www.yoursite.com/newpage.html

Redirect 301 /oldpage2.html http://www.yoursite.com/folder/

Redirect an Entire Site with .htaccess

Redirect 301 / http://newsite.com/

You can also do the work with redirect plugins for WordPress if you are not confident about .htaccess.

Note: .htaccess file is very important, and you should not touch it without adequate knowledge.

5) Launch the new design

Switch to the new site once all are satisfactorily done regarding design and redirection. Depending on the size of your site, you may opt for incremental change in stages.

6) Check Google Search Console data

To ensure everything is according to plan, you must validate the effort put in so far. To do so, you can utilize feature sets available inside Google Search Console. This free tool will let you know all the criticality they found on your site and suggest you fix it according to their importance.

Note: It is advised to check if the redesigned website is verified in Bing Webmaster Tools too. It’s another fantastic free tool for webmasters to check their website’s health.

7) Check Google Analytics data

Like Search Console, Google Analytics is another free yet effective way for you to check whether accidentally developers or designers done any mistake (for example, blocking the search engine to crawl the areas of the website). If you see the traffic drop is huge from any channel then you can start investigating. Once you find the root cause, you can again make your website entirely crawlable and may start seeing again the same level of traffic flow to your site.

Note: Re-check your website’s conversion data in Analytics and try to figure out the reasons behind if any sudden drop you see. Accordingly, you may need to reverse-engineer the site migration process.

8) robots.txt

After the migration, please check the robots.txt file once to make sure no corrupted line of command exists in it for ethical search engines.

9) sitemap.xml

After the migration (no matter whether your website now has a new URL structure or not), create/generate new XML sitemap files to Bing and Google will be a smart move. The reason is the more quickly search engines come to know about the changes, the less you will see the impact on SEO.

10) Keep monitoring

Even if you not encountered any major backlash during the site redesign process, it is important to monitor the changes continuously for understanding the actual after effect. Keep a close tab on every performance data to measure how much progress you gained by doing a redesign.

There are many SEO tools available that enable you to keep track of the performance alongside monitoring keywords rank. If there is a considerable fluctuation, then figure out why this is happening and look to find a solution to keep your site’s performance up after redesigning.

You should monitor your website enough until you are sure about its stability in terms of SEO effort.

Bye for now!