SEO Checklist for Website Redesign
SEO, also known as Search Engine Optimization, is vital to any digital or internet marketing strategy. A website without keywords or a well-executed SEO strategy is merely a showpiece that is unlikely to generate you any business. What good is a website that isn’t bringing in new business for your company?
Well, if your website isn’t paying off like you had hoped, it may be high time you consider redesigning and optimizing it. If this is your first time revamping your website, don’t worry; we’ve got you covered with the perfect SEO checklist for the ultimate website redesign.
Why is Search Engine Optimization an Integral Part of a Website?
Most website owners look to keyword research and ranking before attempting website redesign. They thoroughly analyze their current keywords and plan carefully to optimize for desired keywords in the future.
Search engine optimization utilizes keywords to climb up Google’s search ranks. It is achieved through the relevancy and quality of the content of your website and it’s pages. Here are some important components of SEO;
- The keywords are essential and must be well thought out, as irrelevancy can mislead an audience, which bumps you down in the search engine rankings.
- Content is key, and the keywords must align with the type of content you introduce on your website. Wrong keyword research can lead to optimizing keywords or phrases that won’t get you the visitors that will grow your business.
- Internal linking structure and external link selection have an impact on how the search engine sees your website and the relevancy of it’s respective content.
Keyword research and the resulting search engine ranking are essential for every website as they are the stepping stones to increasing traffic and landing new business. An incorrectly executed website redesign might break an existing keyword strategy, and lead to a negative impact on your site’s traffic. Here are some SEO tips to keep in mind when redesigning a website;
1. Learn what Google Wants
Before diving into the redesign, you should thoroughly analyze how your website performs against Google’s ranking criteria. The most important tools in the journey are Google Analytics and the Google Search Console.
Both of these tools are completely free of cost and can offer valuable insight into areas of your website that could use some improvement.
Google Analytics
This tool helps you understand your website’s performance metrics. Metrics such as; how much traffic it receives, from where it receives the most visitors, and which of your pages are performing the best. With Google Analytic’s valuable insights you can easily analyze how well your website is performing, and which parts of your website are receiving the most attention.
Google Search Console
This tool helps you go deeper into the keyword performance and measure the website results against your keyword rankings. It gives you an idea regarding the keywords that perform best for your website and the pages with the most optimized keywords.
2. Analyze Past Metrics and Keyword Strategies
You must analyze past keyword performance and what you hoped to achieve from strategy before you decided what aspects of your website to redesign. These questions can be answered by testing site performance and measuring it against past goals and site traffic.
During testing, it is vital to look at such metrics as keyword rankings, website ranks, traffic, bounceback, clicks, add-to-carts, and checkouts (or relevant statistics). This data all helps paint a picture of how your visitors are fidning your website, what content they find valuable, and why they are leaving your website without buying your product or using your services. Once these things are identified, make sure to carry forward the strategies that worked in the past and leave behind ones that did not.
Another step is to analyze past strategies against current goals. If you hoped to rank against a certain keyword in the past but have experienced changes in branding or product, you might need to setup a new keyword strategy to accomodate.
3. Decide on your Company’s Current Goals
You should have a clear goal in mind regarding what you hope to achieve from your keyword research. You will want to determined and identify what parts of your website you want to improve and what parts need to stay the same.
Inbound and outbound links are extremely important for keyword performance. Google ranks a website according to its authority and quality. Outbound links increase relevancy and authority, while inbound links add to the quality. Discarding or modifying pages that have a lot of inbound traffic will most likely have an adverse effect on your website’s health and reduce your ranking. Also, extensive modification of an existing page’s content can also lead to an adverse effect. There are ways that content can be moved within a website, but doing so is a delicate business, so make sure you know what you are doing before attempting it.
Moreover, as keyword ranking is a dynamic and ever-changing process, your goals will need to align with current industry practices, otherwise they will fall short of achieving your desired effect.
4. Incorporate SEO into Website Design
The layout of a website affects, the way that content is presented, and the internal linking structure of your website all can have a dramatic effect on the impact of your site keywords. Website redesign should balance content and keywords in a way that is pleasing to Google’s webbot, so as to rank well within the search engine positioning. The bot not only needs to recognize the keyword (or words) that your website is attempting to rank well for, but also deem it relevant to your website’s content.
Make sure the content is accessible for the ranking bots as well as the users. The inner pages need to be visible and easily accessable to both types of users. Not only is it imperative that visitors (and bots) can reach all parts of your website, but you will want them to be able to reach their desired content easily. If something isn’t easy to access, visitors are less likely to find it and bots are less likely to deem it relevant and include it in the SERPS.
5. Consider Keyword Research and Site Metrics
Conducting keyword research is necessary for your monthly analysis of website performance. The Google ranking algorithm is changing continuously, and so is the need for onging keyword optimization and website maintance. After you have selected the relevant keywords you want to rank for, make sure you do the required upkeep to help your site rank well for them.
Once you are satisfied with the research, it is time to put them to the test and apply the planned changes to your website. Once the changes have been in place for a few weeks, make sure to go back and analyze the resulting effects. It may take quite a few tweaks and changes in order to achieve optimal performance. This process should be repeated throughout the year so that you can have a better understanding of how the keywords impacted traffic and identify the relevant results over time.
Final Thoughts
If you want to redesign your website while keeping it in line with your SEO goals, contact Website Development Done Right for a reliable analysis, and the professional skills needed to make sure your website redesign accomplishes the SEO boost that you are needing it to. Our experienced team is here to help you through every step of the way, and help you land new business.
A redesign is a necessity once in a while. However, it must be approached with caution. Doing it right can result in a marked increase in new visitors and new business, done wrong it can be detrimental to your website’s health and growth. Build on tried and true SEO knowledge and ensure you keep your website’s high-performing pages intact!
