Things to consider with regards to SEO when redesigning a website

[mancmusicman]

I will be redesigning a website in wordpress. currently the website is html/css based

My concern is i dont want to lose any of the Search engine rankings.

what should i put in place to avoid that situation

[MarkFasel51]

When you redesign a website, whether utilizing WordPress or any other technology or CMS, there are several things to keep in mind.

I'll first address WordPress. I am a WordPress developer (as well as an expert on various other CMS technologies), and as such WordPress can be very good for any website large and small. However there are many things to consider. First, when you select WordPress you must determine whether you choose to use a template and make modifications either visually or to the code or if you will select a developer to create a custom WordPress theme.

Selecting a Template can be effective but you MUST know the quality. There are so many people and companies out there that provide WordPress templates whether a fixed price for the template or a club membership, but how do you know its any good? I have found over time to trust only a few as many sites out there provide very poor quality templates.

You might be asking how can I define quality in a template and what about these templates, they look good. The visual aspect to your template is of course important, however the quality, especially when it comes to SEO is based on the actual code, html, css, etc. Many developers don't provide quality code, so SEO can and will be affected - ie improper use of header tags, etc.

Over time here are several WordPress vendors that I have found provide great quality:

• ThemeForest this site is by far the best. Their requirements for becoming an author are extreme and they only accept the best. I have been working on selling themes here as well and they look at EVERYTHING to ensure quality.
• WooThemes this site provides excellent themes and they feature some of the best developers on the web!
• StudioPress also offers great themes and high quality.

Now on to plugins. If you have your theme and it provides the quality you desire, utilizing various plugins will ensure that you achieve the desired SEO results you are looking for.

As mentioned by Sha, Yoast SEO is a very good plugin which is found here http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/ however I also use All in One SEO and have found it very good for SEO and received great results.

As mentioned you want to make sure that your content is optimized and everything ported over so keeping current links will definitely help. You could also have Google re-index your website.

I also suggest utilizing a Sitemap.xml plugin to ensure that it is constantly up to date: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/

If you find that a template is not helping you or meeting your requirements, I would recommend a custom WordPress theme. This will ensure that the website is developed properly for SEO and ensures all plugins will work properly.

There are many other aspects that can play a part in a WordPress built website, but these are the most significant. If you have any further questions or comments, feel free to ask and I will do my best to answer your questions!

Thanks,

• Mark

[ShaMenz]

Hi Manuel,

This blog post Web Design Company Fail #1 will give you an idea of some of the things to watch out for when redesigning sites.

One trap with Wordpress sites is inadvertently using a template that has built-in SEO problems, so do some good research on the template you select to make sure that there are no known issues identified.

The other thing is to make sure that you plan right from the start to eliminate the standard duplicate content problems generated by default in Wordpress. Using a good SEO plugin for Wordpress is a good idea for this reason. I find that Yoast SEO for Wordpress is very helpful.

Hope that helps,

Sha

[sesertin]

Just regular things: do not change urls, keep content and utilize a design that tends to load fast. No matter what you do there will surely be some moving up and down when you publish the new site. You can consider a link building compaign after finished to show google that people are linkimg to your new site as they are liking it. This should be some great signal to google.