Many redesigned websites fail to improve SEO, often damaging existing rankings and creating challenges for SEO teams trying to recover lost traffic. This can severely affect business visibility, lead generation, and sales. Being handed a new website often means significant time and effort must be spent just to get traffic levels back to where they were before the redesign.
Successfully planning a website involves retaining existing SEO traffic while setting the stage for further improvement. This article outlines a structured approach to ensure your new website retains and boosts your SEO performance. Follow these steps closely to maximize your chances of maintaining and enhancing your SEO successes.
Current Rankings and Traffic Assessment
Understanding current traffic sources is essential for any effective SEO strategy. Start by spending time in Google Analytics and Google Search Console to identify top-ranking keywords, high-traffic keywords, popular content, high-opportunity pages, and potential keywords. This data will help you document what is currently effective and ensure these elements are preserved in your new site.
Google Search Console provides invaluable insights into your rankings and traffic. Here, you can identify high-opportunity keywords and pages with numerous impressions but relatively few clicks. Navigate to Performance > Search Results and pay particular attention to the queries and pages tabs. Order the information by clicks (traffic) and impressions (opportunity), and document your findings meticulously.
Additionally, conduct a crawl of your current website and save a copy of the crawl data. This step allows you to check links to pages and compare them with the new site. Tools like Screaming Frog can be very cost-effective for this purpose. Finally, incorporate any SEO tools for rank tracking but prioritize data from Google Search Console and Google Analytics for their accuracy and relevancy.
SEO and Website Objectives
Goals are the cornerstone of any successful project. Clearly defining your objectives for the new website helps in making informed decisions throughout the project. Your overarching objective might be to generate more leads or sales, but you should also set supporting sub-goals such as improving SEO and conversion rates.
Using SMART goals ensures your objectives are specific and measurable. For example, SEO Goal 1 might be to rank your service pages higher, while SEO Goal 2 could be to rank your marketing content aimed at the upper funnel more prominently. In addition to your goals, consider setting anti-goals to determine what you want to avoid, such as having a website identical to your competitors.
Documenting these goals in your website plan will provide a framework for assessing your progress and making necessary adjustments. This approach helps in aligning your business objectives with your SEO strategies, creating a more focused and efficient roadmap for your website project.
Target Audience and Customer Profiles
Identifying your target audience and customer segments is crucial for creating content that resonates with your audience. Start by defining the different audience segments you want to reach, such as men, women, students, Generation X, or Millennials. Understand their demographics, goals, problems, and where they turn for information online.
For each audience segment, delve into the specifics—what issues they face, what they seek to achieve, and where they generally consume information. Collecting this data will aid in structuring your site to meet the needs of each segment, which in turn facilitates easier optimization.
Utilize tools like the SEO Value Proposition Template and SCAMPER to gain deeper insights into each customer segment. Google emphasizes creating helpful, people-first content. Understanding your audience’s needs and writing specifically for them will enhance the effectiveness of your SEO. Thoroughly documenting this information in your website plan ensures your content strategy is well-aligned with your SEO objectives.
Site Structure and Sitemap Design
A well-planned sitemap gives a clear overview of your new site and helps ensure alignment with your SEO goals. It sets the stage for gathering stakeholder feedback and addressing potential issues early in the planning process. This saves time, money, and effort later on when making adjustments during development.
Begin by drafting a simple bullet-point sitemap. This should include essential pages such as Home, About Us, various category pages, detail pages, and other content sections like resources and contact information. Utilize tools like Draw.io for visual representations if necessary. Segmenting the sitemap based on target audiences and marketing objectives aids in creating a more organized and effective website.
Ensuring that high-performing pages from the current site are included in the new sitemap is vital for maintaining traffic and setting up future growth. This structured approach allows for a seamless transition and helps provide context for each document in your site’s hierarchy. When planning your sitemap, keep SEO at the forefront to retain valuable traffic and improve overall site performance.
Page Content and Functionality Planning
Planning the content and functionality of each page is crucial for achieving your SEO and overall website goals. Create a detailed plan for each page, outlining its primary purpose, required functionalities (such as forms), and the type of content it will include (text, images, videos). This helps ensure that every component supports the page’s goals and contributes to a cohesive user experience.
For SEO-specific aspects, include notes on the page’s title, meta description, and any high-performing content that should be retained. Minimizing changes to well-performing pages helps preserve their SEO value. Consider different goals for various pages, such as generating leads, funneling users to product pages, or increasing exposure for remarketing purposes.
Thoroughly detailing each page’s requirements in your website plan enhances the effectiveness of your SEO strategy and ensures all elements align with your marketing objectives. This detailed planning prevents unnecessary changes during development, saving time and resources while optimizing your site for better performance.
SEO Specifics and Continued Monitoring
Ensuring that all SEO specifics are handled correctly is vital for retaining and improving your website’s performance. If feasible, keep the old site live on a temporary URL during the transition. Create a comprehensive list of redirects from the old pages to the new ones, ensuring continuity and preserving link equity.
Migrate high-performing content, page titles, and meta descriptions to the new site. Where possible, update external backlinks to point to the new URLs. Post-launch, closely monitor your site’s performance using metrics such as rankings, traffic, and impressions. This allows for quick identification and resolution of any issues that may arise.
Continued monitoring and adjustments based on performance data ensure your site maintains its SEO effectiveness and continues to improve. By following these steps, you cover the main SEO points and create a foundation for ongoing success.
Create Your Website Plan
At this stage, you should have a comprehensive and concise plan that outlines all the essential elements needed for your new site. Your plan should include an assessment of current rankings and traffic, clearly defined project goals, detailed customer segments, a well-organized website structure and sitemap, thorough content and functionality planning for each page, and crucial SEO specifics.
Many businesses fail to thoroughly plan their websites, often creating brief outlines and leaving the rest to web developers. However, web developers may not fully understand your business needs, making it essential to provide a detailed plan to ensure optimal results. This approach not only improves SEO but also aligns with broader business and marketing goals.
Investing time in research and planning may seem like an additional task, but it ultimately saves time, money, and effort. Well-executed planning results in a more successful website launch and improved SEO performance, positioning your business for sustained growth and success.
Launch and Beyond
Many redesigned websites fail to enhance SEO and often end up harming existing rankings. This creates challenges for SEO teams as they struggle to regain lost traffic, impacting business visibility, lead generation, and sales performance. When handed a newly revamped website, SEO professionals typically spend significant time and effort just to restore previous traffic levels rather than focus on growth.
Effective website planning is crucial to retain existing SEO traffic while laying the groundwork for future improvements. This approach not only prevents losses but also sets the stage for continued SEO success. This article provides a detailed methodology to ensure your new website not only retains but also boosts your SEO performance. By following these structured steps, you can maximize your chances of maintaining and enhancing your SEO results.
Key steps include thorough keyword research, proper site architecture planning, and careful URL structuring. Additionally, migrating existing content and properly setting up 301 redirects are essential to preserving SEO equity. Regular monitoring and SEO audits post-launch can also help promptly address any issues, ensuring that your new design supports long-term SEO goals. With diligent planning and execution, a website redesign can become an opportunity to elevate your SEO performance to new heights rather than jeopardize it.