How to Maintain Your SEO Ranking After Website Redesign
Article by J.C. Yee
Graphics Design by Vargheese Martin
It’s pretty common among website owners to raise a number of concerns when going for a website redesign, and to maintain SEO ranking is one of them. After all, achieving a high rank on the search engine results pages (SERPs) is already a difficult task. You wouldn’t want that to go to waste especially when your redesign is supposed to improve your presence online. In our previous blog, we discussed the most common SEO misconceptions you need to be aware of. Here, we list down 5 important things you should do to maintain your SEO ranking even whenever you redesign your website.
5 Tips to Maintain SEO Ranking When You Redesign Your Website
Maintain SEO elements on your migration
When transferring your content to your new website, make sure to carry over the SEO elements you’ve implemented on your old site. These include the meta tags on every page and blog post.
In doing so, you’ll ensure that your current SEO standing will be retained even after you migrate. Simply review and store every data in a separate file to have an easier time putting them on your new site.
Unless there are any vital improvements you need to make on them, try to minimise the changes to avoid the risk of losing your SERP ranking.
Stay consistent with your layout or structure
It’s highly advisable to maintain your site layout to avoid confusion on your new site. Of course, you can skip this part if your existing site provides a poor navigation experience.
This is because your frequent site visitors might’ve already been used to the layout that you’ve had for years. Implementing major structural changes exposes you to the risk of confusing them, which could eventually affect your site’s bounce rate.
If Google records that your website is generating poor click-through and bounce rates, your SEO ranking will be lower.
Update your URLs
Often, your frequent site visitors rely on their search history to return to previously visited pages. If your new site won’t use the same URLs on your old website, chances are they’ll arrive at an Error 404 page, which can damage your SEO ranking.
Ensure that you’re providing a good user experience and SEO performance by updating your URLs with redirects. This means that when users visit your page with a saved, old URL from their browser, they will be easily redirected to the same page from your new website.
Redirects help maintain your SEO ranking as they transfer inbound links that have also been implemented on your old website.
Don’t forget about on-page SEO
Having a website redesign will often impact your search engine ranking one way or another. To minimise its impact and immediately alleviate any potential problems, you must implement quality on-page SEO practices. These include:
- Robot-friendly URLs. Make your URLs simple and straightforward so that the search engine bots will be able to easily identify what your page is ranking for.
- Meta tags. Meta tags include your site and its web pages’ meta title and description. It contains the summary of a specific page that’s displayed on the SERPs.
- SEO Keywords. Optimize the keywords and anchor texts that you want to rank for in the search results. Make sure that you’re using and building links with these keywords to ensure that your site will show up when people look for it.
To know more about the best practices in on-page SEO, it’s highly advisable to consult with an SEO professional.
Double-check on your SSL certificate
If you wonder why websites need an SSL certificate, well, a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protects your website from attacks. It does so by preventing hackers and bots from accessing sensitive information on your site. When you revamp and migrate your website, it’s highly likely that your SSL will be deactivated temporarily.
Ensure to double-check on your SSL certificate and reinstall them when necessary. For search engines, site safety and security is a highly important factor. They always don’t want to direct users to a potentially harmful website.
Avoid making SEO mistakes when you redesign your website. Get in touch with us now at sales@gotafflair.com for a free consultation!
