Implement proper SEO When Redesign Website
1. Utilize 301 Redirects
After you read Website Builder review and realize the best thing for you to do as a way of improving your business is to redesign the site, then you should keep in mind the aspect of informing search engines that the content you had has moved to a new location. You can utilize the 301 redirects for proper SEO so that the search engines will know the URLs to your old website have moved to a new site permanently. It is necessary for you to avoid the risks of developing broken links where customers will not access your site after they search for specific terms which you used to rank high. Sometimes it can be hard to implement the strategy automatically, but you should ensure you apply the redirects to the pages which you used to access a lot of visitors.
2. Handling Change of domains
If the new website you have come up with has a new domain, then you should start by moving the old site to the new domain. The next step should involve setting a one to one 301 redirect. Countercheck and ensure it has worked before you proceed to other stages in your website redesign.
3. Utilizing Backlinks
You can use Google analytics to know the number of backlinks referring to your site and those which are attracting high traffic. There are several SEO tools out there you can utilize to analyze the backlinks to your old site. Try to contact the owners of the domains which were linking to your website and informed them about the change of field so that they can direct them to the right pages. Failure to contact them will leave the backlinks to point to the old website. You can as well apply 301 redirects to have the links pointing to your new site. Backlinks are among the factors used to rank a website; you should try to retain as many links as possible during your redesign process.
4. Page titles and Meta descriptions
Ensure all the pages on your new website have Meta descriptions and page titles. If the page titles and Meta descriptions are unique to specific pages in your old site, you can transfer them to the new website pages. If your old site did not have user-friendly page titles, then you can utilize the opportunity to create SEO friendly Meta descriptions and page titles.
5. Creation of Sitemaps
In this guide of proper SEO, it is necessary for you to have sitemaps on your new website. There should be an HTML sitemap for your visitors as well as an XML sitemap for the search engines. Submit XML Sitemap to Google and Bing so that your site can be indexed.
6. 404 Page not found
Even if you had created 301 redirects, it is also necessary for you to create 404 pages not found in your process of the website redesign. The 404 page helps your visitors to get back on the track when they are about to get lost when on the site. A search box on the 404 page makes it easy for the users to search for a given page on your website if they are lost in the process. Tracking on the page allows you to know the referrer so that you can fix the problem. It should be indicated for the search engines to see the page had broken links.
7. Robots.txt
The Robots.txt file informs the search engines about pages you will not like to have crawled. You should update the file to match your new URL structure. Any test or development website should not be crawled because it can lead to the creation of duplicate content.
