Creating a website that retains and enhances your SEO performance can be a challenge, especially during redesigns. Many businesses unintentionally damage their existing rankings, leading to loss of traffic, which can impact visibility, leads, and sales. In this guide, we’ll explore how to plan a new website that preserves existing SEO strength while building a foundation for growth.
Common SEO Mistakes in Website Redesigns
Too often, businesses finish a website redesign only to discover that their SEO hasn’t been considered, resulting in traffic loss. A lack of planning often leads to costly fixes and extended timeframes to recover rankings.
One case involved a six-figure website redesign project that inadvertently destroyed the company’s SEO. Months of work, coupled with significant costs, were required to restore traffic, with additional expenses for PPC to make up for the lost organic traffic.
The Importance of SEO Planning
Effective SEO begins with a clear, detailed plan that involves input from all stakeholders. Without proper planning, unexpected issues can arise during development, leading to last-minute changes, delays, or additional costs.
This article outlines five key steps to help you retain SEO traffic while building an SEO-friendly website structure.
Five Steps to Create an SEO-Friendly Website
1. Analyze Existing Rankings and Traffic
Before making any changes to your website, it’s essential to understand where your traffic comes from. Use Google Analytics and Google Search Console to identify the following:
- High-ranking keywords
- High-traffic pages
- High-opportunity keywords and content
This data helps you identify pages that are crucial to your traffic. If these pages are not properly migrated or optimized, it can lead to a significant drop in traffic.
How to Use Google Search Console:
Navigate to Performance > Search Results and explore the queries and pages tabs. Sort by clicks and impressions to identify top-performing keywords and high-potential opportunities. Document this data to guide your content migration.
2. Set Clear SEO and Website Goals
Clearly defined goals are essential for ensuring a successful project. These goals should be measurable and aligned with both SEO objectives and broader business targets.
Some common goals include:
- Increasing leads or sales from the website
- Improving rankings for service or product pages
- Enhancing rankings for top-funnel marketing content
For SEO, specific goals might include ranking higher for certain keywords or improving conversion rates from organic traffic. Always remember to create SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound).
3. Define Audience and Customer Segments
Understanding your target audience is key to designing a site structure that resonates with them. Define the demographics of your audience, such as age, gender, location, and online behavior.
For each segment, ask:
- What are their goals or problems?
- Where do they typically search for information online?
This information will guide your website structure, making it easier to optimize for different audience needs. It will also help you create content that speaks directly to your target users, which is essential for successful SEO.
4. Create a Site Structure and Sitemap
A clear sitemap helps organize the content and ensures the site structure aligns with both SEO and user experience goals. The sitemap should include all high-traffic pages from your current site, ensuring they are integrated into the new design without losing SEO value.
Building the Sitemap:
Start by outlining your main categories and subcategories. Include essential pages like the homepage, service pages, blog categories, and contact pages. Tools like Draw.io can help you create visual sitemaps that are easy to share with stakeholders.
5. Plan Page Content and Scope
For each page on the new site, define the following:
- Goal: What is the primary purpose of the page (e.g., lead generation, funneling traffic)?
- Features: List any functionality needed (e.g., forms, CTAs).
- Content: Specify text, images, videos, and SEO elements like titles and meta descriptions.
By scoping out each page in detail, you ensure that every piece of content is aligned with your goals and optimized for search engines.
SEO-Specific Considerations
Redirections and Content Migration
When launching a new site, ensure that high-performing pages are redirected to their new URLs. Failing to do so can result in broken links and loss of SEO value. Also, ensure all meta titles and descriptions are carried over for high-traffic pages.
Monitor Performance After Launch
After launching your new site, monitor SEO performance through Google Search Console and track rankings, traffic, and impressions. This will help you identify any issues early on and make necessary adjustments.