When doing a website redesign, there are several things to check to ensure that your rankings and SEO performance are not affected negatively. If you fail to follow all the steps in the right way, your search engines will get confused and the website’s trust will be damaged.

Do you want to learn how to redesign a website without damaging SEO rankings? If yes, then Star Web Maker, a well-known website design company in Noida can help you. They make use of new design methods which enhance the functionality and experience of your website for users.

You should understand that redesigning not only makes your website look contemporary and updated but make the visitors happy too. Remember happy visitors convert into more leads.

Why website redesign is essential?

When we talk about website redesign, we mean changing the appearance and feel of the website. However, there are several other reasons to redesign the website including:

• You wish to transform the appearance and feel or the theme of your website to more contemporary standards.
• Your existing website theme is not responsive and you want your website to be more mobile-friendly.
• You are planning to rebrand your business.
• You wish to be updated with modern UI/UX norms of a website such as Google rewards websites which are more user-friendly.
• You want to change your content management platform.

How to redesign a website without damaging SEO?

Each website redesign is unique and needs its own specific process. Here are some tips that can make it easy for you to redesign the website without damaging SEO.

• Create a backup of the website

As a preventive measure, it is important to create a backup of the existing site before starting a website redesign. You need to make a backup of the theme files, database, and plugins. If things go sideways, you can return the website to the earlier version.

However, creating a backup is easy. You can make a backup of the website through Star Web Maker by just following simple steps.

• Evaluate all website pages

To check what pages of your website are ranked the highest and which ones are visited often, you can use Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Center the move around them as those pages require the shortest and typeable URLs which are simple to remember and share. It might be possible that some of these pages need to be featured in prime spots in the newly redesigned navigation panel to get an improved pull.

If you are finding difficulty in analyzing all website pages then take the help of experts available at Star Web Maker.

• Rewrite or combine pages that don’t work well

Make sure to look at the rest of the pages which did not make it to the top. It is better to check if they can be adjusted in some way to offer you improved results. Sometimes, it is all about writing a more engaging copy or moving up to the featured image. Rewriting some copy can also fit right along with redesigning, so this should not be ignored.

• Create a list of all pages present in your new and old website

During the redesign website procedure, you may or may not edit the URL structure of web pages. If you change it, make sure to inform all the search engines about the changes you are making.

If you fail to do this, your domain’s authority will be impacted and this will further influence the organic rankings of your website and reduce the flow of organic traffic.

It is essential to create a list of URLs present in your old website. This can be done by saving the sitemap as a text file. To download the latest sitemap, you can also take the help of Star Web Maker. On the other hand, you should also create a list of titles, page names, and it’s URLs for a new website.

• Do not erase any pages and use 301 redirects to redirect renamed pages permanently

Simply deleting pages will create 404 “Page Not Found” errors. This will further affect your rankings and search engine traffic negatively because your website will get smaller and throw away content essentially. 

If any certain content is old or irrelevant, you need to tell Google that there is a new version of this content and redirect Google to your new page. If the page had good rankings or it was linked to other websites, you will not lose that value as you are trying to keep the SEO rankings together.          

It is important to use 301 permanent redirects to lead visitors to the new URLs while maintaining the ranks of your old URLs.

• Assure all the meta titles and descriptions are in place on the new website

Before you go live with the design of your new website, make sure to check the page title and meta description of all your pages present on the new website.

If you are transforming the content of your website, ensure that the meta description of each page is updated so that it matches both new and updated content.

• Check the website for content errors

There is nothing more off-putting than a website having spelling and grammar mistakes. It ruins the reading experience of the visitors completely and creates a bad image of your brand as well. So, before making your new website live, properly read all the content and eliminate mistakes. Also, check that all the header & sub-header tags and SEO keywords are placed in the right way.

• Make the new website live

Once you are done with the content pages, design changes, and proving that all tags & codes are in place, it is time to switch your old website with the new one.

Summary Thus, redesigning a website without damaging SEO can be a bit difficult for a business. It is a complex process that requires attention from an expert. It is always better to hire a web design company in Noida like Star Web Maker. This web design agency has experts who have experience of redesigning websites without harming their rankings.