Getting into Website Redesign. If you have decided to redesign your website, there are certain checklists that you should follow before relaunching your website. The first and foremost factor that affects your website is your SEO (search engine optimization) existing performance. The current ranking in SERPs* and your website’s organic traffic will get affected due to the overlooked SEO measures. You Normally decide to redesign your website due to low conversions or desire a new look for your outdated website. So while redesigning your website, it is crucial to consider SEO practices before launching your new redesigned website.
Importance of Keyword Strategy in Website Redesign:
Keyword strategy is a promising concept which helps decide the type of content to be posted on a website. Keyword research helps analyze the target market and helps develop strong content to draw more organic traffic to your website. This keyword research ends up leading to a better ranking in SERPs*. Google Keyword Planner, finds the keywords that users used when searching for the information related to your product or service. The Google Keyword Planner is a free tool.
301 Redirect:
When your website needs redesign, or restructuring, 301 redirect mapping helps migrate your existing SEO** history without losing its ranking. The preservation of your ranking with 301 ensures you keep hold of your old traffic, while targeting new traffic. Most companies lost their website’s good ranking in SERPs and traffic due to the inaccurate implementation of 301 redirects. Match the list of old URLs with the new URLs to prevent the users from ending up on 404-pages.
Sitemap:
The sitemap helps list all the information, such as videos, pages, etc., on your site. This sitemap helps Google understand your website better to crawl them efficiently when a user is looking for information. The sitemap lets Google know about the pages that are considered important and gives general information about the pages. Having your sitemap up-to-date in both the XML and HTML format is essential.
An XML sitemap file, helps Google understand and crawl your page, which is considered crucial. Your sitemap file is usually placed at the domain’s root domain. It allows you to add information about the URL, such as the frequency of changes, its last updated status, etc.
If your website is large and has a lot of pages, an HTML sitemap will help users navigate seamlessly. It gives a recapitulation of all the pages on your site. HTML sitemaps focus on creating a better user experience. Google considers your page experience and enhances your ranking besides best content or information.
Blocking Googlebot During Website Redesign:
When your website is under redesign, it is advised to block the Googlebot, which prevents crawling your staging site. Google uses two different types of crawlers: desktop and mobile, to crawl your website. Before preventing Google bots from crawling your site’s content, know the differences in how the Googlebot is being prevented from indexing and crawling a page and disallowing access to the page. If the Googlebot is blocked from crawling your staging site, the contents in the newly launched site will not be considered as duplicate content by Google.
The SEO strategy helps your website to function smoothly and helps increase the conversion rate by driving traffic to your site among other competitive sites. Though there are many factors that contribute to an effective website redesign, SEO techniques turn out to be the most crucial ones.
*SERPS – Search Engine Results Page
** SEO – Search Engine Optimization
Original Article Written by //www.designpluz.com.au/ Submitted to //www.amazines.com/ and edited by //pcguys.org.uk/
