Why is a Website Redesign Necessary?
Just like we would at times feel the need for a makeover, have a haircut, or update our wardrobe, your website needs a fresh boost through redesigning. The website gives the first impression of your business to remote consumers. The overall aim of this redesigning is to present an enhanced user experience, which attracts more traffic. Here are the main reasons why SEO agencies recommend a website redesign.
1) To make navigation more user-friendly so that people would cultivate trust in your brand.
2) To present a clear design or to add more tabs for clarity on the products and services you offer.
3) To make the website more compatible with the software which you use to run several reports.
4) To improve Search Engine Ranking.
5) To incorporate more features as per the need of the hour. For instance, some local businesses introduced a video-calling option on their webpage to assist customers in shopping during COVID lockdown, to display the products as they would do in person.
How to get SEO done with a Website Redesign?
It is in no way a wise idea to have a cool-looking website without SEO done well. While doing a website redesign, your goal is to retain the existing web traffic and also to improve it. The following precautions would help you attain these goals.
1) Analyze your current website for SEO:
Firstly you would need to analyze your current website in terms of your SEO. Benchmark the performance of your website and check what factors are driving the existing traffic. It could be the content, keywords, backlinks, or anything else. Retain those factors in your restructured website so that your current SEO work is not lost.
2) Do On-Page Optimization:
Content is the backbone of any website. Wherever you have good content that drives in traffic, minimize the changes you make to it.
Any changes to the internal links in your updated website can have a vast impact on SEO. Ensure that not too many changes are made in the internal links, and if you make any, make sure that the URLs are updated wherever you changed the navigation panes.
Check the analytic reports to review the best backlinks present on your website. In this process, you may analyze the quality of the backlinks using the SEM Rush tool.
Update the backlinks at the relevant keyword-rich content to ensure that the SEO is at its best.
Remove all the non-contributing and broken links to improve the website quality.
3) Have the Redesign Done on a Temporary URL and Check the Status:
It is a good practice not to make the changes directly on the original website. Instead, create a temporary URL, and try to make the changes on it, allow a thorough check, and then launch it. In this process, your web developer may temporarily stop the search engines from crawling to your website.
Once you are all ready to launch the new one, make sure you check the verification status by clicking on the ‘Fetch as Google’ and the ‘Fetch as Render’ options. Your website is visible on search engines if you get positive results in both the options.
Also, remember to check the robot.txt file under crawl to check if it became corrupt during the process of restructuring the website. Your SEO agency can help you with all these checks in detail.
4) Use 301 Redirects:
A 301 redirect is one of the best tips to retain web traffic. When you move your website from one URL to another, users who do not know it may still attempt to visit your old URL. It makes them confront a server error ‘404-page not found’ message. By using a 301 redirect, you may bring back your users to your new website instead of giving them the ‘404’ error. Using a 301 redirect also keeps your website within the fold for search engines to detect quickly and thus helps a lot in SEO.
5) Use Breadcrumbs for Easy Navigation:
Breadcrumbs are the path indicators present under the primary header of a website. Here is how a breadcrumb looks.
When there are lots of pages on your website, and a lot of navigation happens, breadcrumbs make the users get back to a previous page sooner and give a good user experience. Adding breadcrumbs helps in content classification. But to use this feature, the content on your website should be well-organized.
6) Create an XML Sitemap:
An XML sitemap is a roadmap indicator of all links on your website. It lists all the website pages and helps Google and other search engines to crawl through your website easily. When you restructure your website, an XML sitemap helps the search engines understand the changes to your website easily.
7) Monitor the Redesigned Website by Technical Audit:
You may use the Google Search Central tool to check the overall SEO performance of your website.
Other SEO tools like Ahrefs, Rank Math, Moz can also be of help. Monitor regularly the website performance by reviewing the Analytics reports ensuring that there are no obstacles in the way of SEO.
These are some of the tips that you can do to promote the SEO performance of your redesigned website.
Where Can I get my Website Redesigned?
Professional SEO services provided by KloudPortal can help to give your website a grand new makeover by incorporating interesting SEO features. KloudPortal is a reputed SEO agency in Hyderabad that works closely with clients to offer online marketing services as per their business requirements. You may contact them to get more information.