Avoid SEO Pitfalls of a Web Site Redesign
Posted by Liz Gallagher on Mon, Nov 02, 2009 @ 09:21 AM
You've hit the point where you can't stand your old web site and you are ready for a web site redesign. You can't wait to dump the old site so that you can show off your new state-of-the-art website with the latest Web 2.0 features.
STOP RIGHT THERE! Don't dump that old website just yet! Have you considered that your old website may have built up some credibility on Google and the other Search Engines? That your current web pages may already rank well for some of your important keyword phrases? Whether you worked hard on your Search Engine Optimization strategy or you got where you are by sheer luck, you don't want to lose everything and start from scratch. Do you?
Of course not! So you need to have a web site redesign strategy in place before you upgrade to that new site.
Website Redesign Strategy
1. Install Analytics on your current web site. If you are not already running Google Analytics or some other analytics program on your website, you need to set this up ASAP.
2. Review Analytics - You need to analyze the statistics on your current website. What are your most visited pages? What keywords are being used to find those pages? This is very valuable information!
3. Keep well performing pages intact - Determine which pages are performing well and bringing a lot of traffic to your site. You want to be very careful not to make any drastic changes to the content on these pages because it might have an adverse affect on your SEO.
4. Create Permanent Redirects - There is a good chance that your new web pages will have new names, especially if you are moving to a Content Management System. You need to set up 301-Permanent Redirects to alert the search engines that your pages have moved and that anyone looking for your old pages should automatically be redirected to your new pages. The benefits here are 2-fold:
- Visitors to your site will not get frustrated with page not found errors and leave your site to go to a competitor's website
- Your pages will retain their SEO page rank. Page rank from the old pages is transferred to the new ones.
So by all means, upgrade the look & feel of your website - but not at the expense of losing your page rank & SEO standings.