jpg 2021 January 20 by The Creative Monsters dallas seo consultant A website redesign is a common practice in our industry. With a number of digital strategies that all lead back to a company’s website and growing consumer expectations , a modern, responsive website is necessary to continue to evolve in the digital landscape. However, a website redesign is a massive undertaking and is not something that can happen overnight.
On average, a website design and development project takes about six weeks to complete, and that is with minimal changes and fast response times, it can take even longer if those factors are changed. The most common pitfalls of a website redesign project is hurting any SEO strategies that are currently in place. Our Dallas SEO consultants have worked with clients on the transition of their website for a redesign project, and the most common issue is hurting your own website traffic and SEO in the long-term because of past mistakes.
What businesses should know
These are the most common SEO pitfalls you want to avoid during the website redesign process. Lack of redirects One of the most common mistakes is transferring everything over to the new website with no redirects from the old website. Any URL changes need to have a redirect to tell search engines and users alike that there has been a change and to go to the updated pages.
Even if the old pages are being deleted, you don’t want to simply delete them. Where is the most relevant new page that these pages should redirect to? If you reduce your service pages, what redirects should happen?
It can redirect to the main service page or the most related pages. Our Dallas SEO consultants always tell clients to never just delete content without having redirects in place because you could lose your hard earned rankings. Changing content and removing keywords When content is changed, most of the time, our experts notice that the site’s navigation changes along with it.
Putting the idea into practice
And all of a sudden, the new page is “water damage repair” without a redirect from the original “flood restoration” and it’s the same content. The content might be the same, but if it is rearranged, you find a common pitfall here. The little things start to add up to a big mistake, the content was moved from one service page to another, with keywords gone and the URL structure changed and no direct, wowzer.
That is a lot of cleaning up to do! Not only does this hurt content, but it affects keywords. Keywords are the backbone of ranking on search engines, and unless the company before was working on black hat SEO services , removing keywords without a new strategy in place is a major pitfall.
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