What Not to Do: Effective Website Redesign

Avoid SEO Fails for Website Redesign, ITVibes, Houston, SEO

A website redesign project sounds exciting, especially if you’re long overdue for an overhaul. But if you’ve invested any amount of time or your hard-earned marketing dollars into SEO and have climbed the SERPs to a valuable position, you may resist the change.

7 SEO Mistakes to Avoid During a Website Redesign

You’ve persuaded the search engines to drive awareness and led your customers to your site. You want an updated, modern look, feel and function for your website. But will you have to give up one for the other? Will you be starting over?
Not if you begin your website redesign with a proactive plan in place that will help you keep your hard-earned ‘SEO-juice’! You know how the saying goes “If you fail to plan, you’ve planned to fail!”
But, you have to continue to update the user experience to stay competitive. Many business owners have successfully pulled off update after update without losing their audience. Now it’s your turn!
Successfully pull off update after update without losing your audience. Click To Tweet
Here are 7 SEO mistakes to avoid when redesigning your website:

Fail #1: Aiming at an SEO Wormhole

Don’t get sucked into designing a website or SEO keyphrase strategy without a clear structure. You need to know what your goals are with the website you’re designing. Are you trying to get more sales or volunteers? Are you selling a service or product? What does your target audience look like?
A website without direction may look updated but miss the mark on giving you the results you want. And that means wasted resources on something that should boost your online presence and traffic. Know your website goals so you can strategize your website redesign and retain SEO value.  

Fail #2: Not Setting The SEO & Website Bar

You can’t know where you’re headed if you don’t know where you’ve been. Know the starting point to work upwards from your current website analytics and ranking information. Without this bar of your present lead insights, peaks, traffic, and more, you can’t log positive or negative changes in your analytics.
How does this help? You find out what works for your website and what doesn’t. Focus on boosting strategies in areas where your web design and SEO are working and fill the cracks where it’s needed. You will have a clear picture of the “stuff” that bogs your web page, slows site speed, and stops viewers from further exploring.

Fail #3: Hidden Red Flag Analytics

What’s the point of an ax that’s too blunt to cut through your wood? Online tools work a similar way. If they aren’t sharpened to hit the analytics you need to for your website; you will get faulty information. This means the foundation for your web redesign will be flawed. Run your analytical tools and make sure they are producing the information you need to use. You also need your tools to push out valuable data on your web pages and continuously update to maintain your rankings on an ongoing basis.  

Fail #4: Uh Oh. Redirects Aren’t Correct.

Say you moved within the same neighborhood but to another house down the street. Well, you have to redirect your friends and family to your new place. So now let’s bring that analogy to your new website. You have an updated, modern, user-friendly website, but you botched the redirects. Your target audience isn’t reaching the pages you need them to. Panicking? Breathe. Redirects can be quick fixes. However, you need to put them on your to-do list ASAP!

Fail #5: SEO Juice Isn’t Only Google Page Rank

Search engine rankings have evolved. It’s no longer sufficient to get your web pages to rank high. More components go into it: keyphrase strategy, easy to navigate web design, rich snippets, and more. Sound like a lot? Skip ahead to get a professional solution.

Fail #6: Unsecured Data

We’ve all dealt with it as users. That horrific pop-up that flashes about a website you landed on being unsecured. With the most recent update, Google views your site as less valuable if your website isn’t secure. Most websites require some data from their potential clients, emails, phone numbers, etc. Your viewers need to feel safe visiting your website. The trust you built in person and offline needs to translate online. So secure data between your server and browser by having your SSL enabled.

Fail #7: Unflattering Responsive Designs

We live in an on-the-go era. Most of your potential customers want to check out your website quickly and while on the move. If someone recommends you, the person interested usually pulls out their phone or tablet to check out your website. Having a mobile and tablet friendly responsive design ups the value of your brand to both search engines and target audience.

Avoid SEO Pitfalls & Get Going!

As you map out your website redesign, avoid these common SEO mistakes. Get an impactful online presence and fill your different SEO buckets with ease with our expertise. Connect with our ITVibes team to get started on planning your new online marketing strategies without losing your current website’s SEO foundation. We will work with you on an ongoing basis to keep your website, social media, and SEO updated, fun, and engaging.