Website redesign - how do I avoid screwing up my site SEO?
-
We are preparing to launch a newly designed (and much improved) website in the next few months. I want to be very careful to ensure we do not mess up any rankings (and hopefully actually improve rankings) when switching over the site.
I'm particularly concerned about one key phrase that our homepage currently ranks on. After the redesign it would be more appropriate for our of our subpages to rank for that term, but I'd rather have our homepage rank (less relevant for this keyword than the subpage) then nothing at all.
I know about 301 redirects, and we are planning on creating a few comprehensive diagrams to ensure we redirect old pages to the correct new pages. Beyond that, what can I do to preserve our rankings?
Thanks!
-Ryan
-
What works for my clients when I help them transition is to do all that's been suggested so far (even considering splitting out the work into phases if at all possible). But also, it's doing a press release right away, getting social buzz about the new site, and working on adding / building up the content around the core phrases, then link to that new content from the home page.
Then focus on link building efforts to reinforce the new URLs. And see if you can get any existing link sources to change the URLs in those to the new version links - sending much stronger signals than just 301 redirected links.
If you do the work properly, you should eventually have both the home page and the inner pages show up for your most important phrases.
-
EGOL is hinting at something I"ll say more explicitly; why don't you split your site design into two phases?
- Phase 1: Optimize / Update the UI of your site. Keep the markup that's relevant to your SEO efforts the same or improve it.
- Phase 2: Change the URLs of the pages on your site.
Once the dust settles from Phase 1 and you've seen how Google has responded to you updates, consider whether or not you really want to do Phase 2.
All that said, I have implemented both Phase 1 and Phase 2 at the same time before. I was careful to add lots of 301 redirect rules to my .htaccess files using mod_rewrite. I did not experience any kind of rankings penalty from Google.
-
Great to hear that you are improving your design. Its a great time to improve your SEO too!
You want to be sure that you preserve all of your on-page optimization elements such as <title> <h> and other markup. You also want to preserve internal linkage, anchor text and image optimization.</p> <p>Navigation structure can be a place where you might be able to make some linkjuice and usability gains by placing links to important pages in your persistent navigation, incorporating navigation hierarchy such as breadcrumbs, and incorporating relevant links in your paragraph text if you don't have these features at present.</p> <p>For such an important project it might be worthwhile to hire a person who really understands how linkjuice and flows through a site to help you</p> <p>Finally you mention 301 redirects on old pages to new pages. This sounds like you are going to change a lot of URLs. Is that necessary? Preserving the old URLs can be more efficient.</p></title>
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Redirecting an Entire Site to a Page on Another Site?
So I have a site that I want to shut down http://vowrenewalsmaui.com and redirect to a dedicated Vow Renewals page I am making on this site here: https://simplemauiwedding.net. My main question is: I don't want to lose all the authority of the pages and if I just redirect the site using my domain registrar's 301 redirect it will only redirect the main URL not all of the supporting pages, to my knowledge. How do I not lose all the authority of the supporting pages and still shut down the site and close down my site builder? I know if I leave the site up I can redirect all of the individual pages to corresponding pages on the other site, but I want to be done with it. Just trying to figure out if there is a better way than I know of. The domain is hosted through GoDaddy.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | photoseo10 -
Breaking up a site into multiple sites
Hi, I am working on plan to divide up mid-number DA website into multiple sites. So the current site's content will be divided up among these new sites. We can't share anything going forward because each site will be independent. The current homepage will change to just link out to the new sites and have minimal content. I am thinking the websites will take a hit in rankings but I don't know how much and how long the drop will last. I know if you redirect an entire domain to a new domain the impact is negligible but in this case I'm only redirecting parts of a site to a new domain. Say we rank #1 for "blue widget" on the current site. That page is going to be redirected to new site and new domain. How much of a drop can we expect? How hard will it be to rank for other new keywords say "purple widget" that we don't have now? How much link juice can i expect to pass from current website to new websites? Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | timdavis0 -
If I want to update the title of a page on my website would that negatively impact SEO?
I want to update a few page titles on my website. Some are duplicate titles, and some titles are just too long. Will my website be negatively impacted at all if I update these? I read somewhere that once you have created a page you need to stick to the title you have given it. So I am not sure if I should leave these pages be and make note of utilizing better SEO practices for the future or if I can go back and edit them. Any insight is much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | meredithrice0 -
Would you redirect Website A to Website B, when Website B is in the middle of a HTTP=>HTTPS migration?
Hey guys, I'm curious on your thoughts around this scenario... Website A: 35,000 monthly pageviews 1,000 pages 375 root linking domains currently HTTPS focused on one topic weak rankings for competitive keywords Website B: 3M monthly pageviews 32,500 pages 3,500 root linking domains started HTTP to HTTPS migration 1 week ago. 1/3 of pages indexed as HTTPS. focused on many topics strong rankings for competitive keywords Requirement: I want to have a reliable read on how Website A's keyword rankings change after redirecting it's pages to Website A. This post-migration analysis will be used as a basis to assess the risk of redirecting another website we own that is similar to Website A into Website B. My question: Would you wait until most of the pages on Website B are indexed as HTTPS before doing a 301 of Website A to Website B? Please back up your answer with reasons why or why not 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jeremycabral0 -
Two websites vs. one for SEO
I recently met with a new potential client who currently has two websites for his business - one that is for the business as a whole and another that is specific to one of his particular services (his main service and what the overall business is known for). My first question was "why do you have two websites?" His response was that he has had a really hard time ranking well organically for his main service. He worked with an SEO company for two years and never was able to establish a solid organic presence for searches related to his main service - so he went ahead and had a site built to focus specifically on that service with the hope that it would help him rank organically for searches related to that service. The new site was built very recently (Dec. 2014) and it hasn't had a lot of optimization work put into it. The original site has a much higher Domain Authority, more incoming links, etc. My typical preference has always been to use one website and drive all traffic to that site, while building out specific content for any products/services on individual pages of the site. For some reason I'm torn as to what to do with this particular situation since his main concern is ranking for his core service, which hasn't happened with the original site. I'm concerned, though, that optimizing and managing two websites will be less effective than driving all of the traffic to one site, and that it could actually be detrimental overall. What are your thoughts? Suggestions? Feel free to let me know if you need any more details.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | garrettkite0 -
Website not properly listed on google organic despite SEO efforts
Hello, I have worked thoroughly on my website tags including HTML titles, URLs, H1 headers and text on each section. The problem is that despite this effort, my website does not seem to improve in terms of ranking (the onsite optimization has been done 6 months ago already). We have a sitemap, we have done link building and everything but still no tangible progress. The anomaly I am experiencing is the following: If I search on Google.com.lb for "aparment for sale in lebanon" I don't get the section on my website that is optimized for that particular query (which is the Buy section located here http://www.ramcolb.com/apartment-sale-beirut-lebanon). my site appears only on page 6 but the Homepage appears which is very counter intuitive because it is not optimized for the "apartment for sale in Lebanon" keyword. And this anomaly is present on almost all sections and their relevant queries. The relevant section for the particular query never appears, it is always another irrelevant section that appears but far in the listings (beyond page 6). It is as if Google hasn't indexed properly my website and is mixing up the sections... Has anyone experienced this type of problems? what can be done? Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ImadKaram0 -
Website Migration and SEO
Recently I migrated three websites from www.product.com to www.brandname.com/product. Two of these site are performing as normal when it comes to SEO but one of them lost half of its traffic and dropped in rankings significantly. All pages have been properly redirected, onsite SEO is intact and optimized, and all pages are indexed by Search engines. Has anyone had experience with this type of migration that could give some input on what a possible solution could be? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlexVelazquez0 -
Best way to host multiple sites for maximum seo
We have over 100 websites we built for clients that we currently host on 1 shared godaddy hosting account. They each have a link to us but since they are all under one shared account, we feel that we are not maximizing the inbound link potential. I've looked into c class hosting but found that either the ip's were flagged as spam, or they shared nameservers which defeats the purpose. I've also been told that since the c class ip's a hosting company gives to you are all owned by them, that also defeats the purpose. Anyone have any solutions besides opening 130 accounts with different hosting companies? Also, will it make any difference changing existing sites onto different hosts now or are they already tainted?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seopet0