Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an integral part of digital marketing so it’s vital for any business owner to have a solid SEO foundation. 

As your business grows and your website evolves, it’s critical to take care of SEO parameters while redesigning the website. 

Redesigning your website can harm your SEO if not managed correctly. If you are new to SEO and want to know how to maintain your site’s organic performance during a revamp or re-build, 291 Media have put together the tips below to help. 

List down all pages

The first thing you do need to do is make a list of all the pages that your old website has. You can download the XML sitemap or the URL structure of the website to map the pages. 

As you keep redesign your pages, you can take all the metadata from old pages and paste it into the new pages. This will reduce the on-page work while redesigning the website. 

Use a staging website

You don’t want to redesign your live website, as this could look messy and affect your customer’s experience and ability to use it. 

If you are staying on the same platform, we suggest creating a replica of the website and copying everything on a temporary URL. Once you copy the complete website, you can start making the changes and it will not damage the SEO of your current site. 

You can create a subdomain and host the staging website to make all the needed changes. If you don’t have an in-house team to do this, we can do this for you to ensure everything is managed and transferred seamlessly. 

Minimise redirects

Too many redirects can hurt your website’s SEO so you need to handle all the redirections carefully. 

Make sure there are minimum redirects while you redirect your pages and blogs. Having too many redirects will increase the loading speed and hence increase the bounce rate. So, once you are done with the redesigning of the website, open the XML sitemap and check each URL path to ensure everything is fine. 

Test Your New Site

Now your site is built or updated, the next step is to test it before moving it to your main domain. Check your technical and SEO points including your website’s loading speed, mobile-friendliness, and on-page SEO factors. 

Run an in-depth SEO audit

Once your new website is ready, it’s time to run a comprehensive SEO audit on the website and check for all possible glitches. Remember to check redirects, images, meta tags, and your linking structure. 

Tools such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console can help you check your website is properly running tracking the right property. It is a vital step that people often overlook while redesigning the website. 

If you don’t have an in-house developer, we can help you with these steps to revamp your website and improve it’s SEO performance. 

If you would like any help or further advice, we’re here to help. 

Contact us.