The best search engine optimization strategies utilize a variety of different channels to drive new business. Off-page SEO tactics like social media marketing, advertising, and local listing generation are increasingly popular tactics to use, but what about on-page SEO? Take a minute to examine your business’s website and measure it against your biggest competition. You may notice that your competitors’ websites have a more professional, cutting-edge appearance than yours does. Redesigning the website in a new layout can be great for bringing your design up to speed, but how will it affect your traffic and rankings? We’ll go into more detail below!
It Can Change Your Business’s Traffic
The question of how a website redesign will affect your business’s SEO standings is best answered by examining the extent of how you’re redesigning it. Improving elements of your website can result in greater long-term success but could hurt your business’s short-term financial goals. When gauging the extent of the damage, it’s important to take these factors into consideration:
- Are you using a different URL going forward?
- Will your website be moving interfaces? (Ex. HTML-based site to WordPress or Wix)
- Did you work with another company to make your website?
The biggest drops in traffic will come to those web designers looking to change their URLs, as they will basically have to start from scratch from a rankings standpoint. However, it is not the end of the world! You can redirect your old URLs to your business’s new one. This way, your old URL – if it still ranks well before launch – will be responsible for a lot of your early traffic, helping to boost the rankings of your new URL.
Tips For Navigating Back To The Top
Getting back to the top of the search ranks after a website redesign can be challenging at first, but there are a few tricks that you can implement to expedite that process and increase your chances of ranking well! They are:
- Keep Your Most Successful Content: Did you have a blog that appeared first in search results? Was your main service page well-constructed? These are prime examples of content that you should be migrating over to the new website. If you don’t do this, you won’t have your biggest ranking points!
- Set Up Redirects If Necessary: If you’re changing your URL, the appropriate redirections are vital. You’ll be relying on your old URL for at least the first part of your search, so making sure you can utilize that to drive new traffic is paramount.
- Use Your Previously Existing Metadata: Metadata and schema markup are huge tools in terms of getting your website to rank well, so you shouldn’t make any sweeping changes to these after a redesign. If you don’t have an index of every page complete with its metadata saved somewhere, now would be a good time to start! The more successful elements you can translate to your new site, the better off it will be.
Web Design & SEO With Boston Web Marketing
If your website is in need of a facelift in both design and search engine result rankings, Boston Web Marketing is the best company to assist with both! We’ve spent years connecting business owners from a variety of industries with successful and beautiful website designs with the SEO prowess to match them. Don’t sit on your old web design from the early 2000s; contact Boston Web Marketing today to improve your business’s appearance for the better!