SEO Disasters to Avoid During a Website Redesign
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This document provides guidance on SEO best practices for website redesigns. It discusses avoiding common mistakes like lacking goals, plans, content mapping and auditing. It emphasizes the importance of pre-launch checklists, post-launch testing, and metric tracking to measure success. Regular auditing and reporting on key performance indicators is also recommended to catch issues and showcase progress. The overall message is that preparation, testing and analysis are crucial for a successful website redesign.
SEO Disasters to Avoid During a Website Redesign
- 1. SEO Disasters to Avoid During a Website Redesign By: Rebecca Berin
- 2. Contact: Andrew@digitalreachagency.com | Digital Reach We are a B2B Digital Marketing Agency focusing on demand generation. Companies work with us to: • Increase qualified leads • Track SEO and SEM to ROI • Get Funnel Visibility About Us • Search Engine Optimization • Paid Search & Display • Website Redesign • Marketing Automation
- 3. Contact: Andrew@digitalreachagency.com | Digital Reach 1 SEO Mistakes to Avoid During Website Redesigns 2 Checklists for Pre- and Post-Launch 3 Tracking the Progress (and Success) of your Redesign
- 4. 4 SEO Mistakes to Avoid During Website Redesigns
- 5. Starting Without a Goal Begin your journey with a solidified goal in mind. Are you looking to improve your UX? Are you rebranding? Or is it just time for a general update? Best Practices for Goal Setting: ● Evangelize what you hope to accomplish and get everyone on the same page. ● Understand the metrics you’re hoping to impact and how to track them.
- 6. Lacking a Plan Have a plan, have a checklist, and thank us later... A website redesign can be a gruelling process and going in without a solidified plan in place (showing what needs to be done and who needs to do it) can be detrimental to your success. 1. Set your goals and intent. 2. Map your process. 3. Assign tasks and deadlines. 4. Stick to the plan.
- 7. Not Making Content Important Enough Here are the key things to remember as you begin your content process: ● Understand the intent of your pages and the audience you’re targeting. ● Know how much content you hope to have on your webpages (your designers will thank you for sticking to this). ● Perform keyword research and map to all appropriate pages. The value of your content has rapidly become one of the most important factors in your search ranks. Your content goals and planning should be a priority.
- 8. Not Mapping Site Structure Your site map will be an important guide for everyone in your process. It will be critical you establish your map to help guide: • Navigation: Your header and footer navigations as well as what pages will be dependents. • Content Hierarchy: Your site map will be helpful for understanding the purpose of each page in the structure. • Redirect Mapping: Your map can also help make the redirect mapping process much easier.
- 9. 9 Checklists for Pre- and Post-Launch
- 10. Pre-Launch Prep Content planning and creation Design phasing QA testing Following a thorough pre-launch checklist is crucial to a healthy launch. Make sure everyone is on the same page with what needs to be done and when. What should be included:
- 11. Pre-Launch Checklist High-Level Starting Points: • Clarify your goals and intent. Understand the audience you’re targeting. • Going in with a general understanding of 1) what you hope to accomplish and 2) who you’re hoping to effect will make the process go smoothly. Planning for your Content: • Perform an SEO and Content Audit to find gaps and opportunities to target. • Plan and map the content through a navigation/sitemap. • Create the content and stick to your deadlines (to the best of your ability).
- 12. Pre-Launch Checklist Design and Development: • Create a style guide to establish the layout, color scheme, fonts etc. • Consider the User Experience. • Prioritize mobile friendliness on your site. Other Important Details: • Redirect Mapping - map your old URLs to what the new URLs will be. • This is a very important step on the SEO side due to link equity and UX. • Download a backup of your site. • Test, test, test!
- 13. Post-Launch Checklist It seems like a short checklist… but it can be quite a time commitment! Test, Test, Test Weekly Auditing It will be very important to QA test post-launch to make sure everything was launched as planned and any uncovered functionality issues are fixed ASAP. You’re looking to uncover: possible 404s, content gaps, or site speed lags. Utilize a multi-tool approach to audit your site from an SEO stand-point.
- 14. Sticking to the timeline is imperative to completion success. • Skipping steps or forcing teams to move forward without important collateral can cause roadblocks and delays moving forward. Post-launch auditing is a necessary commitment. • Dependent on the size of your site, you’ll end up committing to a 4-8 week auditing timeline. • These weekly audits are important for catching small errors early so they don’t become big problems later. Things to Know… *Already in the midst of a redesign and missed a step?
- 15. 15 Tracking the Progress (and Success) of your Redesign
- 16. Metric Tracking It’s important to take your time to map out what impact you want your projects to have on your site and its data. Often times, you can’t put an exact timeframe or number on SEO goals. Get everyone on board with what the end goal is and how you’ll track it.
- 17. Metric Tracking Your Goals Metrics to Watch Checking Post-Launch Health Search Visibility, Traffic Tracking Successes User Behavior, Conversions Finding Room for Improvement Errors, Stagnant Metrics
- 18. ...can be tedious. But it is important and a valuable best practice you can utilize in your digital marketing efforts moving forward. Look Into: • Technical errors like 4xx and 5xx or redirect issues. • Content errors like duplications or gaps. • Testing your site’s speed. Post-Launch Auditing
- 19. Reporting & Audit Cadence Weekly Auditing • Post-launch weekly audits are important for health tracking. Monthly/Quarterly • Use monthlies to help to showcase quick wins on your site. • Quarterlies will help to show success with bigger swing strategies and those with steady success over time. Yearly Review • Use this time to show the impact your redesign had at a high-level. YoY metrics, growth over time, etc.
- 20. 20 Get Your LIVE Site Analysis
- 21. Site Analysis Rebecca Berin Associate Director of SEO In a 30 minute consultation, learn: ✓ Where you stand in relation to competitors ✓ Measure revenue opportunity from Search ✓ What you can do to accelerate your SEO results Get a second opinion on your approach to SEO