Market MindShift Team | SEO |

Keep Your SEO Intact During a Website Redesign

In 2017, 46.8 percent of the global population accessed the internet and by 2021 this figure is projected to grow to 53.7 percent. With these numbers, it shouldn’t be hard to convince any business owner why having a nice-looking, easy-to-use website is extremely important.

Your website is an integral part of your business that customers base their first impression on. Although a website redesign takes a lot of hard work, it can be well worth it…if it’s done right. When search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t taken into account, a redesign can dissolve a brand’s digital presence and negatively impact sales driven from organic search. The Market MindShift team has some specific steps for you to follow when redesigning your website so that you can avoid an SEO disaster.

Perform a Site Audit

Your website may look pretty, but there could be underlying issues that can hinder your success. For users to find your site, search engines must be able to index the content of your pages. For this reason, having a search engine friendly website means designing a site with no barriers to search engines.

Before redesigning your site, we suggest that you perform a site audit to better understand what you need to focus on. This will help you identify the strengths, weaknesses, risks, and opportunities of your current website. The audit focuses on design problems or limitations that could potentially interfere with users finding your site in search results. The Market MindShift team can provide you with a site audit or there are various online tools that can crawl your site like Screaming Frog.

Pay close attention to:

• Missing page titles
  Duplicate page titles
  Page titles over 512 pixels
  Page titles below 200 pixels
  Missing H1 tags
  Duplicate H1 tags
  Multiple H1 tags
  Missing meta descriptions
  Duplicate meta descriptions
  Meta descriptions over 923 pixels
  Canonical tags
  Canonicalisation
  Broken internal/external links
  Structured markup usage (correct tagging, applicable page usage)
  Image alt text
  XML sitemap
  Robots.txt
  Duplicate content
  Pages indexed by Google
  Site speed and performance
  URL structure

Plan and Set Goals

The key to completing any project is setting attainable goals, and a website redesign is no exception. After the SEO audit is complete, you can begin to create a list of goals that you would like to achieve. Having the audit before this step gives you a baseline to compare to the finished product. Create a list with your SEO steps lined out, timing, a checklist, and quality control plan. Giving this list to your team will ensure that SEO is taken into consideration and integrated throughout the process.

Optimization and Keywords

We’ve said it once and we’ll say it again: keyword research is crucial. Having a clear understanding of what your audience is looking for can lead to huge success. Keywords are terms (or phrases) that users will input into a search engine to find an answer to their query. Integrating these keywords into your design plan will increase the probability that users find your products and services. You can use online tools such as SEMRush or even the Google search drop down box. The most important thing to remember is that you should never disconnect yourself from the research. You are a consumer. Think of keywords or phrases that you, yourself would search in Google. Once you have the list of keywords, add them to your site design through content, relevant tags, and pages.

Post-Launch Check-Ups

You’ve put in a lot of work to finally launch your site without any SEO disasters. While the hard part may be over, there are some things that you still need to do. We suggest that you make sure to keep track of your website through analytics software (such as Google Analytics). Looking at which pages are getting the most or least amount of hits can help you target the pages that need more work. This also gives you insight into the minds of the consumer and what they are looking for when they get to your page.

Redesign with Market MindShift

Whether you are redesigning your current website or building a new one, Market MindShift can help you do it the right way. Our team is prepared to adapt quickly and solve a wide variety of issues. The redesign process may seem daunting, but it is essential for the growth of your business and online presence. For more information about what we can offer you, call 480.750.2252 or contact us online.