Redesigns can make an
ugly site pretty, but they can also make a high traffic site invisible. Keep
these tips and no-nos in mind and you can keep yourself out of the CEO’s
office.
SEO Redesign: Teamwork
First
It should go without
saying, but SEOs, developers and designers must work together cohesively during
the site redesign process.
Too often, companies
look to refresh the look of their site, and in the end, destroy their search
engine presence. How? This can come from a myriad of reasons from coding errors,
SEO unfriendly design practices, to even more disastrous practices (e.g.,
content duplication, URL rewriting without redirection, information
architecture changes away from search engine friendly techniques).
Starting the redesign
process with a collaborative call between the SEO team, designer, developer,
and company decision maker(s) is always the best first step.
Often there are two
attitudes present. Either, “We are redesigning our site and are not open to
your ideas…but don’t let us do anything wrong,” or the other attitude (and my
favorite), “Let’s work together to achieve a refreshed look and functionality
and instill any missing SEO opportunities if possible.”
To satisfy both
scenarios, your information delivery as the SEO should be to inform designers
and developers of the mistakes you shouldn’t make and also to announce to all
parties what SEO revisions should be made to the site along with what search
engines have recently been paying attention to.
Page Load Time
A site redesign gives
you the opportunity to re-code, condense externally referenced files, and
achieve faster load times.
Don’t let the designer
use the word “Flash” during your call(s). In an attempt to make a new site look
pretty, the reliance on multimedia usage can have a negative effect on site
speed. Ignoring this is bad, as Google has stated in the last year that site
speed is a ranking consideration – also, slower sites annoy users.
Content Duplication
Ensure that your
development environment or beta sections of the site are excluded from search
engine’s view. Relaunching your site when these elements have been indexed by
the engines means your cool new site is a duplicate and you will be in a mad
dash trying to redirect the development environment that was leaked. Also, make
sure there are no live copies on other servers that have visibility with the
search engines.
Another form of
content duplication is the creation of new URLs without properly redirecting
old URLs via a 301 permanent redirect. This will leave search engines wondering
which page should be ranked.
It's also worth
mentioning that 301s are a must and that 302 temporary redirects should not be
used. Make it commonplace in the redesign process that no one used the word
delete in reference to site content. You should never delete any pages, these
should be permanently redirected to the most relevant launching page.
Content Restrictions
It’s important before
you throw the site to the web that you make sure that you have identified what
pages shouldn't be crawled.
Are there new parts of
the site that shouldn’t be seen by search engines, login pages, etc.? Does the
new site utilize dynamic URL creation or parameters that will need to be
restricted?
Inversely, what pages
might be restricted that shouldn’t be? Is there a folder in the robots.txt file
that is inaccurately excluding pages that should be visible? Have meta robots
tags been placed on pages that shouldn’t have been tags?
Tracking
Make sure that your
analytical tracking code is placed back in the page source before the site goes
live. Additionally, any conversion pages should have the appropriate conversion
tracking code appended. Nothing makes an SEO want to cry like lost data.
Information
Architecture
A redesign is the
perfect time to rethink the direction of the site. Go beyond the need for a
refreshed look and analyze the hierarchy of your content. Google is looking at
this so be sure there is a clear view of the overall site theme as well as
sub-themes flowing into the site through an appropriate folder structure.
URL Rewrite
If you're redesigning
and shaking a site down to its core, there's no better time than now. You have
the attention and devotion of the site developer to make your URLs right.
This is a continuation
of the Information Architecture revisions. Be mindful of folder structure as
well as relevant, keyword-rich text usage in page names.
Want to go the extra
mile? Have the filename extensions removed so down the road if you redesign the
site again and use a different script language you won’t have to do another URL
rewrite.
Lastly, make sure all
rewritten URLs include a 301 permanent redirect from the old URL to the new
URL.
W3C/Section 508/Code
Validation
Take advantage of this
period to address code issues and how your site adheres to W3C and Section 508
compliance factors. Search engines want to see your excellence here and now is
your chance to make their visit successful as well as your human site visitors.
Usability
Can you make the
intended funnel of visit shorter or easier? This is great time for you think
about what you want visitors to do. You may be able to remove a step in the
purchase/goal funnel and increase your site’s convertibility.
Benchmarking
To truly assess the
success of the redesign from an SEO and sales standpoint, ensure that you have
recorded several site statistics as well as focused monitoring in post-launch.
You will be happy you did because it will either be a visible success story or
a lifesaver for finding problems once the site launches.
These include:
·
Run a ranking report.
·
Check your pages
indexed in Google and Bing.
·
Run a page load time
test.
·
Perform a W3C code
validation report.
·
Note the bounce rate,
time on site, pages per visits, and goal completions. Granted, this can be
reviewed in analytics after launch, but be mindful that you should be watching
this.
·
Run a site spider
crawl of the live site to get a good list of URLs on the current site. You may
need this for any clean of missed redirects.
·
Note the average time
for Google to download a page and average pages crawled per visit in Google
Webmaster tools. Also, “fetch as Googlebot” so you have a previous copy of what
Google used to see.
Conclusion
Taking into account all
of the mistakes you or the others on the redesign team shouldn’t be making will
ultimately leave you much less stressed after the site launches. Meanwhile,
minding all the opportunities that a redesign presents from an SEO and
usability standpoint can lead to a successful launch and a fruitful post-launch
environment.
Now get out there and
show them how it’s done!
