Redesigning a Web site comes with risks. Without the right SEO strategy, you can lose visibility and rankings. This article offers essential insights and tips to protect your online performance.
SEO influence when redesigning your website
- Changing content such as text and images can affect the relevance and authority of your pages.
- Structure changes can cause navigation problems and discourage visitors.
- Too much poorly optimized media slows down your website, which has a negative impact on user experience and SEO.
- Changing URLs without 301 redirects can result in broken links and loss of search traffic.
- Improper adaptation of meta titles and descriptions can lower click-through rate and ranking.
Understand the difference between design and content
Use H1 tags strategically for key keywords, not just for formatting. Design and content are separate disciplines; make sure content is preserved during visual updates.
Example: When replacing images, carefully adopt alt tags and titles to maintain SEO.
Common mistakes in a website redesign
1. Reducing text
Drastically reducing text can lead to loss of ranking because search engines have less information to understand your pages.
2. Deleting pages
Removing pages without a strategy for redirects can cause significant search traffic loss.
3. Modifying key elements.
Essential components such as meta titles, H1 tags, internal links and alt tags should be adopted accurately.
4. Changing URLs.
URL changes require 301 redirects to direct search engines and visitors to the correct page. Use a plugin such as Redirection for easy implementation.
Improper migration of a development site
An incomplete migration can cause problems such as:
- Robots.txt files that block search bots.
- Links to a development domain or subdomain that confuse search engines.
Ensure that all references to development environments are properly removed.
Tips for a successful migration
- Identify and protect high-traffic pages.
- Implement a detailed redirect plan.
- Use tools such as Screaming Frog to detect errors.
Need support with your website redesign?
Protect your online visibility with a strategic plan for your website redesign. Our experts are ready to guide you through a successful migration. Contact us at hallo@onlinelabs.nl or call us at 020 – 820 20 22.
