A new guide, Best Practices for Website Redesign & Migration,
outlines detailed best practices for implementing search engine optimization
(SEO) for a website redesign.
It includes a list of
comprehensive tips aimed at educating website owners about common redesign
obstacles, website structure as it relates to SEO, preserving domain and URL
equity, keyword research, and more.
This post summarizes
some key SEO migration elements listed in the guide, with an emphasis on
helping organizations avoid costly errors related to a website redesign and
domain or platform migration.
Common SEO obstacles in website redesign and migration
A proliferation of web
design platforms and tools have made it easier than ever for businesses to
complete a website redesign in record time.
However, many of these
platforms aren’t fully compatible with older computers, slower connection
speeds, and present obstacles for search engine spiders.
The Digital SEO guide
lists twelve of the most common obstacles and includes tips for avoiding them.
Here are a few examples:
Dynamic
URLs that don’t include keywords
Dynamic URLs rely on
variable parameters provided by the web server and are not easily indexed by
search engines since they change based on user query input. A dynamic URL
typically includes character strings versus keywords. Digital recommends that dynamic URLs be
rewritten to include relevant keywords.
Non-permanent redirects
Digital recommends avoiding all redirects that
aren’t permanent. That is, only permanent 301 server-side redirects should be
incorporated into your website update. That means avoiding 302, JavaScript, and
meta refresh redirects.
Page content
Since text is the backbone of how search engines determine keyword relevancy, the Digital guide recommends that some relevant content be included on all pages. Ideally, at least one short paragraph of unique text should be present on each page. If this isn’t possible, then tier-one and tier-two pages should incorporate text-based, keyword-rich headers.
Three of the twelve
obstacles listed in the Digital SEO guide
Six key elements of an SEO-focused redesign
The Digital guide lays out a comprehensive list of
elements that companies should incorporate into their redesign strategy, from
website structure to keyword research, and from to meta information to internal
site linking. The guide acts as a blueprint for businesses so they can minimize
the impact of the redesign on organic search engine rankings and traffic. Here
is a brief summary of each element:
1. Website structure
Folder structure, web
page file names, and keyword-rich content all play a role in an optimal website
structure. “The decisions you make about the naming conventions of your folders
and files, and the way in which you point to specific pages of your website,
can have a huge impact on overall traffic and sales,” writes Digital.
2. Keyword research
Keyword research
should be the starting point of your website redesign so that you can
incorporate relevant, high-volume keywords throughout the entire site
structure. Digital reviews important
keyword guidelines such as how many different terms to target and what keyword
research tools to use when gathering information.
3. Meta information
Meta information—also
referred to as metadata—is the information that appears in search engine
results pages for organic listings. SEO meta information includes a variety of
tags such as <title> and <meta-description>. The guide provides
checklists to help businesses fully optimize each of these important tags.
4. Body content
Body content is
important for good search engine rankings as well as overall website usability.
The Digital guidelines cover the
specifics of creating high quality, SEO-friendly content attributes that will
contribute to search ranking such as keyword choice, frequency, placement,
spacing, and titles.
5. Internal site linking
Internal links are an
important element of good SEO design as they determine how search engines
perceive relevancy for specific keywords. Digital covers the best practices for internal
link creation such as using descriptive text-based links in the main
navigation, limiting the number of links on a page, and more.
6. URL equity
URL equity is “the sum
of several important values tied to URL structure.” Dynamic versus static URLs,
as noted above, play a role in URL equity as do a URL’s external links to the
website, age of the domain, and more.
The importance of creating an SEO redesign strategy
A key pain point with any redesign is the loss of organic search traffic that occurs when established domain equity is lost. The Digital guide provides information to help companies avoid the negative effect a large-scale redesign can have on search visibility and website traffic.
Example of a
successful client domain migration.
With a strong emphasis
on maintaining URL equity, a sample workflow to help with planning, and a list
of expected obstacles, businesses can use this guide to create a comprehensive
SEO strategy for their website redesign or platform migration.
For more tips on how
to create an SEO strategy for website redesign and migration, check out the
full guide, “Best Practices for Website Redesign & Migration.”
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