Things to consider with regards to SEO when redesigning a website
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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.
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
-
Slow website
Hi I have just migrated from a custom written php/mysql site to a site using wordpress and woocommerce. I couldnt believe the drop in speed . I am using a few plugins for wordpress - contact forms / social sharing. and I have a few woocommerce plugins for taking payment etc. I am hosting images css's and js's on W3 Total Cache and MAXCDN hoping to speed the site up but tools at http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt sometimes show that the time between browser request and reply can be between 1 and 15 secs. I have searched all day looking for a post I read about two months ago with a tool that seems to look at server responce and redirect processing etc hoping it would help but cant find it. If anyone knows what I am talking about I would appreciate them posting a link The site is http://www.synergy-health.co.uk and an example of an inner page is http://www.synergy-health.co.uk/home/shop/alacer-emergen-c-1000-mg-vitamin-c-acai-berry-30-packets-8-4-g-each/ Any suggestions please? Perhaps I have w3total cache set wrong? Also, as the has been tanked and is in freefal iin google ranking since January would this be a good time to change the structure of Url from home/shop/product to domain.name/brand/product? Thanks in advance !
Technical SEO | | StephenCallaghan0 -
Website redirects
We consolidated websites. All the international sites have been brought under the roof of our mothership site based in the US: www.crisisprevention.com ... We mapped out all of the URLs and where they should be redirected. However, if someone types in, say, www.crisisprevention.co.uk it redirects to the mothership site, BUT the old URL hangs around no matter what page you navigate to. I feel like it has duplicate content ramifications or worse. I would like opinions on this, so I can take my findings to IT and figure out a solution. Here’s another example: http://www.positive-options.co.uk and another http://www.positive-options.com
Technical SEO | | spackle0 -
Seo Yoast Plugin
In Yoast seo plugin, under the general settings is Sitewide meta settings,under which there is an option to either check or leave unchecked Noindex subpages of archives which says: If you want to prevent /page/2/ and further of any archive to show up in the search results, enable this. I am very confuse if to check or not. What is the best seo practice? Most of our posts are in categories which have 2-4 pages.
Technical SEO | | VillasDiani0 -
Multi Company websites
Hello SEO community ! Hope you'll have some good advice for this project. 🙂 I'm working for a group of companies just starting its SEO experience. Nowadays they have 10 different websites with different names and pretty much the same objectives. So basicly, > Would it be better to gather all website under one adress with subdomains ? They want to display almost the same info, blogs and products.. It make dupplicate content a real pain and Social Media strategy a nightmare. More info: 10 websites for 8 subsidiaries, 1 holding, 1 online shop Each subisdiary has english + its proper language They want regular posts and info updates (blogs, newsletters) They don't have all the same name They all do the same activity Online shop is full a product keywords Ideas: Working on the holding website as mother ship - for branding (social media), actu (blogs), CM (videos, and more)- Displaying the online shop products in all websites (xml) Diplaying blog updates (no full message) via xml on all websites Linking all websites to the blog, shop and holding Tks a lot !
Technical SEO | | AymanH0 -
Dedicated ip helpful for seo
I read somewhere a while back that having a dedicated ip address was helpful for seo if this true or just another rumor? Also I read you should purchase your domain name for multiple yrs, what do you guys think?
Technical SEO | | TinaGammon0 -
What are your thoughts on Twylah and SEO?
I recently signed up for Twylah. If you are not familiar with it, Twylah creates a summary of all your tweets, which you can then add to your site to make them easily accessible for humans and for search engines. On first glance I am really liking this idea, however after adding Twylah to our site, our crawl diagnostics took a major spike in errors and alerts: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/90501/static/Diagnostics%20After%20Twylah.png Here is our Twylah page: http://tweets.hingeheads.com I am not a SEO expert, but the number of errors is worrying me. Are we getting penalized by Search Engines/Google because of the high number in errors/alerts? Curious to hear your thoughts. P.S. I have fwd this to the Twylah team. They will get back to me in the next few days.Diagnostics%20After%20Twylah.png
Technical SEO | | hingeheads0 -
New website, to www or not
I was just wondering if there are any advantages to using the www instead of just the domain name for seo. Can these be elaborated on?
Technical SEO | | simvegas1 -
Seo template for new website
I am revamping my website (www.UltimateBasicTraining.com). It's going to be major and I am concerned about the potential traffic loss since over 60% of my overall traffic comes from organic search results in the military basic training area. Are there any good SEO website templates I can start from? I see a lot out there but would prefer the advice of professionals. Thanks
Technical SEO | | TheVolkinator0