Relaunching Your Website Without Losing Rankings
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A business will need to rebrand at times for a variety of reasons. Law firms have partners retire and have new partners named. Other companies simply want to rebrand to shed their old reputation after a massive change. There might be a concern that doing this will lead to losing all the progress made on the current website or URL. Understanding how to proceed is very important which is why this should be reserved for professionals.
Establish Website Metrics in Terms of Performance
The new website design needs to be measured in comparison to the current design. Important data to understand and track are:
- How much of the website traffic is coming from search engines like Google or Bing?
- What keywords or phrases is the website currently ranking for? Losing search engine rankings is not something any business wants to do as it will directly impact their organic traffic from search engines.
- How many calls and leads/sales does the website generate?
- How many pages do visitors view per visit? The more engagement, the better in most cases. Searching around due to a website being difficult to navigate leading to user frustration.
- How many pages of the website are indexed by major search engines?
Having base metrics for the questions asked above can act as a great way to measure a new website design.
Track URL Changes to Pages
If any of your page URLs have changed you need to track this. If the website changed to a CMS, this change also needs to be noted. You are going to want to redirect from old URLs to the newer URLs, so traffic is not lost. Page loading matters when it comes to loading redirects so keep this in mind.
Have Testers Use Your Website
Simply because you are comfortable with the website design does not mean that all visitors will be. Testing the website with strangers can be immensely helpful and can be done at an affordable rate. Asking the following questions about the website and having testers answer them can provide insight:
- What is the goal of having visitors come to the website? These goals can vary from getting phone calls to having appointments set.
- Is the content on the website concise and easy to understand?
- When visiting on a mobile device, is there anything that you would change?
The more people that provide feedback, the better. Current customers can be a huge resource when it comes to testing the website. Testing on various browsers is also going to be important as the website should work seamlessly on all major browsers.
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SEO Is Still Important
There might be a need to revamp the website with new pages and images. The website should have a meta description that is optimized for targeted keywords. Title tags are also important and a small detail that should not be overlooked.
Images should have Alt Text as it can help provide a text alternative for search engines.
Header tags should be used carefully as search engines use these to comprehend the structure of content on a page and the overall idea of what a page is for. Content being easier to read and navigate for visitors is another reason header tags are so important.
Launching The Website
Once the website has been launched it is essential to do the following:
- Make sure to remember 301 redirects.
- If you have made the change from HTTP and HTTPS, you need to update your website’s address in Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
- Make sure staff checks the website manually and use incognito tabs to search for your website then click on it in the search results. This can ensure all of the redirects were implemented correctly.
- Check the speed of the website using a tool like PageSpeed Insights. Slow websites can see a drop in rankings as it impacts user experience negatively.
- A great press release to announce the new website along with an email blast can gain attention. Social media is another platform that this should be announced on.
Monitoring the website after its relaunch is going to be imperative. The advice above will help ensure that you will not see a drop in search results after a relaunch or redesign.
About the author
Richard Horvath
Richard is the founder and CEO of TheeDigital, an award-winning web design and full-service internet marketing agency in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Boston, MA. He built his first website in 1999. His team, not only builds high-converting websites but also provides effective SEO and PPC campaign management for ambitious businesses.
