WebRTC Expert Feature

February 23, 2021

7 Reasons Why Your SEO Ranks Slinked After Redesigning Your Website




Are you planning to redesign your website? Probably, you have been postponing the idea. The reason for this is the fear of losing you’re your SEO ranks. Making it to the top positions in the Google search results is an achievement. Each website owner desires to achieve this goal. However, some aspects like redesigning your website can impact it negatively.

 If you are fearing to lose your ranking, you are in the right place. You can avoid ranking losses in a redesign by understanding why they cause them and engaging experts like Sitecentre. Here some of the reasons for slink in SEO ranks after a redesign process:

Loss of links due to site architecture

Web redesigning involves some tasks. You move to new pages and shift your content to them. Also, you change the look with a focus to improve the user experience. All these aspects give your website a facelift. However, it has hurtful impacts on your SEO. The change in site architecture leads to a loss of links.

For instance, the change can affect your hub pages, and the internal path users follow when navigating your site. The result is numerous broken links. When Google notes these changes, it's crawling bots divorce with your site. So, your website loses its ranking position.

Doing it on your existing website

As you start your redesigning process, never do it on your current website. You need to create a temporary website that you will use for the task. Then, you can move the new design to your site bit by bit.  Doing the redesign on your existing website comes with a bundle of issues. The visitors will experience challenges. This aspect means that your website visits will drop.

Also, the site will have many redirect errors that cost you your SEO rankings. You can avoid this experience by doing the redesign on a temporary URL. All you need is to copy your current site on this URL. Do the changes you want and switch to your domain when done. Alternatively, you can involve redesign experts like Sitecentre. This way, you will avoid losing your hard-earned ranking and SERP position.

Poor 301 redirect configuration

Redirecting your URL is crucial when redesigning your website. When you change the URL of your existing site, you need to do a 301 redirect. For instance, if you had a contact page URL on the old website being “www.yoursite.com/contact-us” and your web designer changes it to www.yoursite.com/contact,” you need to redirect both pages. This aspect will ensure that visitors will access your site using the two addresses.

When you ignore 301 redirects or do them the wrong way, your visitors will not reach your site. They will always get 404 web pages not found errors when they use the old URL. The impact of this is hurt on your SEO. But with good 301 redirects, you will retain the SEO position of your old URL.

Deleting well-performing pages and moving them to a new URL

Certainly, you want your new site to be attractive. This goal is achievable by deleting the old pages and moving them to a new home. You want everything to resemble your new design. While this approach will enhance your user experience, it impacts your SEO. In particular, the aspect can be hurtful when it affects your well-performing pages. Many designers focus on ensuring your site gets a superb and appealing appearance.

Though it is necessary, losing the SEO of your hub pages by deleting them would be a costly affair. Retaining the pages as they were before redesign can be an excellent idea. But when the change is unavoidable, you need to consider a redirect of the deleted well-performing pages to the new URL. This way, you will not suffer the SEO rank losses.

Not focusing on Meta descriptions and page tags

Meta descriptions are crucial aspects. When visitors google for particular keywords, the search engine displays part of the Meta description. The description forms a central portion of the ranking. One mistake designers make during the redesigning process is changing the Meta description. The change removes your site from the ranking position when visitors use your key phrase.

Do not follow suit. When you embark on a redesigning journey, it is essential to pay attention to the meta descriptions and tagging. Ensure they remain unchanged. Doing this will ensure your well-ranking pages retain their position. So, when shifting your pages, always keep the meta descriptions of the well-performing pages.

Ignoring webmaster and Google analytics configuration

The goal of any site owner is to have real-time data of their websites. You want to know how the site is performing. Setting up Google Analytics and configuring the webmaster tools is the secret of having real-time information. These configurations are essential when redesigning your website.

As you transfer the site to a new design, always prioritize the two aspects. Doing this will save you from losing any data. As well, your site will remain indexed during the redesigning process. Hence, losing your SEO will be a rare issue. 

Not paying attention to the robot.text file

The robot.text file is a vital element for your SEO. This file helps you to deal with pages that add no value to your site. In other words, it acts as the guide to the search engine and tells it which pages to crawl and which ones not to. It allows or limits access to pages on your site by the search engine. This aspect not only enhances your SEO but also works for your site privacy.

However, during the redesigning of your site, you can corrupt the robot.text file. So, the search engine will access every page that can hurt your SEO. As such, always pay attention to the robot.text file to ensure it is not corrupt after redesigning process.

Wrapping Up

No doubt SEO ranking is the epic of any success in the virtual spaces. For this reason, you need to take care and guard it during redesigning. Working with redesigning experts like Sitecentre can help you retain your ranks as you give your site a facelift. Otherwise, you need to avoid the above issues to avoid losing SEO ranking after redesigning your site.



Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. [Free eNews Subscription]




FOLLOW US

Free WebRTC eNewsletter

Sign up now to recieve your free WebRTC eNewsletter for all up to date news and conference details. Its free! what are you waiting for.