Website Redesign SEO Checklist: Must-Dos Before, During, and After

Why Website Redesign is Important

There are many key drivers that impact the need for a website redesign. Technology changes constantly and website interfaces need to evolve to keep up with new trends and user expectations. Older websites built using outdated technologies can suffer from poor performance, compatibility issues and reduced functionality.

Moreover, business needs change over time. A website revamp allows you to improve the user experience based on customer feedback, align the website with your latest marketing strategies, and showcase new products and services.

Finally, an SEO audit often reveals opportunities to improve your on-page SEO, which involves changes to website content, URLs, metadata and code. This presents the perfect chance to implement these changes for better search visibility.

Before the Redesigning Process

Before starting with your redesign, there are several preparations you should know to ensure a hassle-free transition. Here are some of the pointers to consider:

Conduct a Site Audit

A site audit is a process where you evaluate your current website’s SEO performance. Here, you will review things like:

• Internal link structure -Broken links
• Page speed and site performance
• Content gaps and opportunities
• Metadata and titles
• Technical SEO issues

The site audit will give you a clear view of the changes needed for the redesign in terms of content, code and user experience. You’ll know exactly what to focus on and what to improve.

To gather important data such as page load times and backlinks, use tools like Screaming Frog or Google Analytics. Screaming Frog can crawl your site to provide insights into technical aspects like broken links and metadata. Meanwhile, Google Analytics offers a comprehensive look at user behaviour and site performance metrics. These tools will help you pinpoint areas that need optimization before the redesign. As a result, you get a smoother transition and better SEO outcomes.

Backup Important Data

Before diving into your website redo, it’s crucial to back up all important data to prevent any loss of valuable information during the transition. This step ensures that you have a comprehensive reference point for reconstructing or optimising your site post-redesign.

Begin by conducting a full crawl of your current website. Use Screaming Frog can be to capture a snapshot of your entire site architecture. This crawl will serve as a detailed record of every page and its attributes. It will also provide a safety net should any data be lost during the redesign.

Next, preserve essential elements such as URLs, meta descriptions, and title tags. These components are vital for maintaining your site’s SEO performance and ensuring consistency across the new design. Storing them in easily accessible storage will help you reapply or adjust them as needed. This is important to safeguard your existing rankings.

Set SEO Goals

Before you start, it’s important to define clear SEO objectives that will guide the redesign process. Some common SEO goals for a web revamp include:

• Maintaining existing rankings – This may involve carrying over important on-page elements like URLs, titles, and meta descriptions from the previous site design. By keeping these elements consistent, you can minimise any negative impact on your current search visibility.
• Improving page load times – A redesigned site offers an opportunity to optimise page speeds through techniques like image compression, code optimization, and reducing the number of page requests. Faster load times can help boost rankings and improve the user experience.
• Enhancing content for targeted keywords – The redesign provides a chance to refine your page structure and content to better align with the keywords you want to rank for. You can optimise headings, subheadings, URLs and internal links for your target keywords.
• Expanding internal linking – A new site architecture may allow for more internal linking opportunities between relevant pages. An improved internal link structure can help search engines better understand your site’s content, potentially boosting rankings.

Clearly defining these SEO objectives before beginning the redesign process will ensure that the new site is optimised to meet your search visibility and performance goals from the start.

Also an article from Verz Design: Importance of SEO in Digital Marketing.

During the Website Redo

After the preparation, there are important tasks to complete during the redesign process itself:

Maintain the URL Structure

Retaining the existing URLs during a website revamp is important to prevent drops in search rankings. Changing URLs can cause search engines to see pages as new content and update their index accordingly. This may lead to ranking fluctuations. By keeping URLs consistent, search engines can recognize that the content behind the URL remains largely the same.

If changing URLs is unavoidable during the redesign, ensuring proper 301 redirects are in place from the old URLs to the new URLs can help pass along relevant signals like link equity and citation flow, helping to maintain search visibility.

Preserve Critical Content

While redesigning a website, it is important to avoid unnecessary changes to high-performing content that helps with search engine optimization. Retaining critical content that is already ranking well or receiving significant traffic can help minimise disruptions to search visibility and user experience.

Existing pages that generate the most revenue, leads or engagements should be priorities for preservation during the redesign process. Minor improvements may be made to the structure, formatting and organisation of high-value pages, but major alterations should generally be avoided. This includes:

• Retaining most of the existing copy
• Preserving important internal links and citations
• Making minor improvements to content length, readability and formatting

Friendly tip: Minor adjustments can then be tested and gradually implemented over time to improve content without risking major disruptions.

On-Page SEO Optimization

Ensuring that elements like page titles, meta tags, headers, and images are optimised for the new site. Export these from your old site to retain consistency. Page titles should remain the same to maintain brand recognition and search visibility.

You need to refresh meta descriptions to better reflect the new page content and design. You can also update the headers and subheaders to improve the page structure and readability. Also, make sure to export and reuse any images with alt text or filenames that contribute to SEO.

Test Your Internal Links

Ensure that all internal links are tested and functioning properly to avoid broken links. Broken links can negatively impact a website’s rankings and user experience, so taking the time to validate internal linking during a web revamp is important.

• Identify and audit existing internal links to determine which pages link to which.
• Test each link to confirm they are directing to the correct destination pages. Any broken links should be fixed.
• Update any links that will be redirecting to new pages to point to the new URLs.
• Monitor link status after the redesign launch to identify and fix any new broken links that arise.
• Consider using link checking tools to help identify broken links at scale.

After Redesigning the Website

Once everything is live on the new site, focus on monitoring performance and resolving any issues that arise. Here are some key tasks:

Test Redirects and Crawl the New Site

Ensure that any URLs that have changed as part of the redesign are properly redirect with 301 redirects to pass along link equity and avoid search ranking drops. Additionally, perform a full crawl of the new site using tools like Screaming Frog or Xenu to identify:

• Any pages returning 404 errors indicating broken links
• Any URLs that are missing important internal links
• Any pages with issues that could impact SEO performance

Fixing broken links, redirecting changed URLs, and resolving crawl issues in the first few weeks after a redesign launch will help the new site perform better in search and avoid potential ranking drops.

Update Your XML Sitemap

Once the new website is live, submit an updated XML sitemap to Google Search Console to notify Google of any new or changed pages. This will help Google discover and index the updated content, ensuring it appears in search results. Here are the steps to submit an updated sitemap:

1. Create a fresh XML sitemap that includes all pages on the new website. Tools like XML-Sitemaps.com can help generate an XML sitemap.
2. Login to your Google Search Console account and select the website you want to update.
3. Under the ‘Crawl’ section, select ‘Sitemaps’.
4. Click ‘Add/Test Sitemap’ and enter the URL of your new XML sitemap file.
5. Google will automatically fetch and process your new sitemap, discovering any new or changed pages.
6. Check the ‘Sitemaps’ report in Search Console to verify that there are no errors in the new sitemap.
7. Monitor the ‘Coverage’ report to see how many of the pages in your sitemap have been successfully crawled and indexed.

By submitting an updated XML sitemap, you can ensure Google discovers and indexes all of your new and changed content, improving the chances it will appear in relevant search results.

Monitor Performance and Adjust

Keep a close watch on important metrics like organic traffic, search rankings and click-through rates. Do this for at least a few months after launching the redesigned website. Any significant drops in these key performance indicators could point to issues. However, you can address these through refining your on-page optimization, link building or technical SEO strategy post-launch. Monitor metrics like:

• Organic traffic from Google and other search engines to see if there are any decreases that correlate with the redesign launch.
• Keyword rankings for target keywords to identify any ranking drops for important pages.
• Click-through rates for top pages to determine if the redesign has negatively impacted user interest and engagement.

By actively tracking key metrics and analysing performance data post-redesign, you can identify areas where you to need to refine your SEO strategies. Making adjustments can help resolve issues. This ensure you get your redesigned site back on the path to meeting SEO goals and objectives.

Backlink Audit

After redesigning your website, it’s important to check any external links that point to pages on your site. Some of these backlinks may be pointing to old URLs that no longer exist. To maintain your website authority and SEO, you’ll want to update these backlinks to point to the new URLs. This involves:

• Auditing your backlinks to identify any that are broken or outdated. You can use tools like Ahrefs, Majestic and Google Search Console to find links to your website and determine which pages they link to.
• Reaching out to the webmasters of sites with outdated links and informing them about the new URLs for the relevant pages on your site. Provide a list of the old URLs and corresponding new URLs.
• Requesting that they update their links to point to the new page URLs. Explain that broken links can negatively impact their site’s SEO authority as well, so it benefits both of your websites to fix outdated links.

Conclusion

Proper SEO planning is crucial for ensuring that your redesigned website sees continued success and growth post-launch. By thoroughly checking and optimising key on-page and off-page elements, monitoring performance, and making adjustments as needed, you can maximise the chances your redesign positively impacts your SEO and business goals.

Are you planning to redesign your website but worried about potential SEO issues? At Verz Design, we specialise in creating visually appealing websites that are optimised for search engines, ensuring a smooth transition without sacrificing your rankings. Contact us today for a free consultation, and let’s work together to make your website redesign a success.