When redesigning your website, it’s essential to protect your hard-earned SEO rankings. Website overhauls can easily disrupt SEO if not carefully planned, but there are several steps you can take to safeguard your progress.
1. Document Existing SEO Success:
Start by identifying which pages, keywords, and content currently perform well. Knowing what works will help you ensure that these elements are preserved during the redesign. If you change or remove high-performing content, you risk losing rankings.
2. Preserve URL Structures:
Try to maintain your existing URL structure. If URLs must change, set up 301 redirects to guide traffic from old URLs to the new ones. This prevents users and search engines from landing on broken pages, preserving your SEO equity.
3. Content Retention:
Avoid unnecessary changes to successful content. Maintain on-page SEO elements like titles, meta descriptions, and internal links as much as possible. If you must make changes, do so cautiously and only if it improves user experience.
4. Crawl and Analyze:
Before launching the new site, perform a comprehensive crawl of your old site to capture data on all current URLs, metadata, and internal links. Tools like Screaming Frog can help. This ensures nothing important is lost in the transition.
5. Redirect Backlinks:
Review inbound links and update them wherever possible, especially for high-authority sources. Although 301 redirects will manage much of this, direct links are more efficient.
6. Test and Monitor:
Launch your redesign in phases and monitor your SEO metrics closely. Testing can help spot errors early before they impact your rankings.
By following these steps, you can minimize disruptions to your SEO and keep your website performing well post-redesign. Talk to our team if you have any questions.
