A total website redesign is a complex project, but there comes a time when it is necessary. If you don’t do the redesigning, you can start losing traffic. Even SEO experts find website redesigning to be a challenging task.
- What will happen when the site gets launched officially?
- Will the site be search engine friendly?
- What to do if the 404 errors crop up?
- What about dead links?
If you plan to haul the entire website, there are some things to consider, so make sure that developers, web designers, and the SEO team work in tandem. Site revamp job is not restricted only to designers and developers. You will need services of SEO professionals to see the changes from the traffic viewpoint.
Never rush the launch after website redesigning, because you could miss out on vital SEO steps. For example, you might end up changing the URL structure, without executing the 301 redirects. The benefits of using the 301 redirect WordPress plugin are many, but make sure you to do a correct mapping strategy to ensure that 95% of organic search traffic gets inherited by the redesigned new URLs.
What precautions to take during the WP website redesign process?
- Never pull old site offline – Traffic declines when visitors come across a site saying ‘Sorry, under construction’ for 3 to 4 weeks. Therefore never take your old site down before the redesigned one goes live.
- Evaluate existing keyword strategy – Identify if the site is attracting traffic from long-tail keywords. This can help you apply this research within the redesigning process. Even new categories can be created on these keywords.
- Content optimization – Review content before redesigning the site, because things can possibly change during the process. For example, Meta descriptions get dropped, titles get changed, or SEO gets marginalized. It is bad, so optimize all the content on every page. Focus on adding and fine-tuning content optimization!
Maintain same URL structure
Change in URL structure can make you lose huge traffic from the inbound links. For resolving these issues, you will need to perform an extensive 301 redirects mapping operation.
How to create 301 redirects mapping strategy?
Website redesign includes some pages, which need to be mapped towards a new location. Therefore, you will need to have a comprehensive redirecting plan. Each rewritten webpage needs to have a permanent 301 Redirect. Below are some important tips to remember while implementing the mapping strategy.
- 302 redirects are temporary, so never use them for long term strategy. They are just short term fixes and not SEO friendly, so are not recommended.
- Never delete unnecessary webpages. If you feel the page is not appealing, just change its content or redirect it to an enhanced and helpful URL.
- 404s can be used in rare cases where 301 redirects are not viable. For example, if there are highly toxic backlinks targeting a specific page and is not a crucial landing page then leave 404 error codes. Not redirect! During 301 redirects the positive and negative link equity gets transferred to the new domain. With 404s, the negative link juice can impact limitedly on the whole website performance.
You might also have to use the option of advanced reset for WordPress if things go very wrong while testing new themes and designs. Don’t forget to take backups before doing that. After launching, make sure you closely monitor the traffic!
