If you’re like many online marketers in the midst of a Website Redesign, your top focuses (not necessarily in this order) are: being on time, staying on budget, and achieving your design and website goals (improving on an existing website flaw or enabling new website features, for example). Except for the occasional acknowledgment that “we’re doing redirects” (albeit with or without a best practices strategy), one thing that rarely makes a marketer’s list of top priorities during a redesign is SEO. Don’t get me wrong, that’s not to say that those same marketers, if asked directly, would say Organic search was not important to them, but when in the midst of planning for or implementing a redesign it can sometimes get lost among other competing priorities. As such, we hear things like “we’ll get to SEO after launch,” or “I know we need better Title tags, but I feel like we can do them later.” At best this lack of prioritization (and SEO Strategy) could mean that some SEO opportunities are not identified or considered when they’d be most easy to implement during a Redesign, but at worst it can make for an enormous drop in Organic traffic after launch.
Obviously no marketer wants to be on the extreme end of that spectrum, but even just missing out on low hanging fruit when the website is in its most malleable state can cost you more later whether it’s in time, resources, money, etc.
Before you get too deep into your redesign, consider:
- A well-planned Content Strategy will not only establish the foundation for site organization (navigation) and keyword-targeting strategy, but it will also drive user experience and the potential for increased conversions. Adding, removing, consolidating, or otherwise adjusting Content and your website navigation are all far easier to plan for and more efficient to execute when other website elements are undergoing updates.
- A strategic SEO Transition Strategy (URL Mapping) for your pages is critical to success and often entails more than just “doing redirects”, in addition, implementing a smooth transition can mean the difference between maintaining, losing or increasing your Organic traffic. Need more proof on the positive impacts on your bottom line? Read this case study.
- Technical architecture and backend platform can make or break your website’s crawlability after launch – don’t rely only on those building your website to ensure its readability by search engines. A thorough assessment and audit should be made by SEO Technical Specialists to ensure you’re not inadvertently adding anything or doing anything “under the hood” that could impact Organic visibility.
- Understanding the success of your redesign – and demonstrating it to your leadership – requires an accurate Benchmark to measure against. So get your SEO tracking and web analytics in order before you get too deep so you have good data to compare against later and you can demonstrate your wins.
Want to learn more about SEO and considerations you should keep in mind for either a redesign or an existing website? Register for our SEO Summer Camp webinar series.