It has become a rat race ever since the digital revolution started. So many trends are being re-written. Google Analytics has taken the digital platform to an all-new arena. Among numerous metrics that everyone pays serious attention to, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) stands out, because it contributes directly to the Google rankings. In today’s scenario, websites are being continuously designed and redesigned to make sure that it leaves a tick mark against all the SEO ranking parameters. Let us see how to retain and boost your SEO ranking after a website redesign.
Importance of Search Engine Optimized Website Designing and Redesigning
Now that Google Analytics has literally taken over the digital media platform, it has become a mandate to adhere to the SEO protocols to stay consistent in the virtual world. In order to play the game like a pro, you need to stay in the game, hence it is essential to update your website to meet the requirements of the ever evolving SEO protocols.
Sneak peek of an example
Before checking out the SEO ranking factors, let us look at an example of a familiar website that has constantly re-designing its website.
Facebook is one classic example to look up to for the constant redesigning strategy. Facebook updates its look regularly while including new cool features at the same time making sure to abide by all the SEO protocols to maintain its over ranking.
A glimpse of important SEO ranking factors
With the SEO buzzing around loudly, let us look into the most importantSEO ranking factors.
Important SEO ranking factors
When you go for the website redesign, you need to have the above factors in mind and optimize it according to the SEO ranking parameters.
SEO Friendly Website (Re) Design
When you go for a website redesign, you need to first do a complete health check of the existing website. If you have too many changes and re-coding to be done, you might need to think of having a sub-URL for the new design. But, if the changes are minimal, then the same URL could be used for the redesign.
There are new website design trends adapted for this 2020. You can check if you can incorporate those features in your redesign strategies. Newbie features like grid view for the layout of your website, incorporation of chatbots, and less verbose overall look definitely adds on to the overall SEO ranking. So, while you redesign your website, implementing them is a smart move.
Website loading speed matters!
In this need for speed world, everything is expected to happen instantly. Hence while redesigning your website, you need to think of the elements that will consume a lot of time to load and have to see how to cut those elements down completely or work about an alternative to those elements. For example, having all so much visual content like pictures and videos will definitely take its own time to lead. So, having the right balance of both the visual and verbal content will work wonders on the loading time of your website.
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MFI Integrated
Mobile-First Indexing (MFI) strategies are the ones that focus on mobile-friendly web-browsing. Ever since the smartphone technology literally possessed humankind, everything started changing so fast that even the SEO ranking looks into MFI strategies closely. So, when you redesign your website, you need to think in terms of mobile-friendly browsing. You need to make sure when your website is browsed from devices other than laptops and desktops, they need to have a smooth user experience. Else, you will happen to lose the necessary website hits which indirectly brings down the overall ranking.
URL, Domain & Authorization
URLs play a vital role in SEO ranking. You need to have a dot xxx according to the nature of your business. For example, if your website is NGO based, then having .org helps in making SEO list you under the NGOs and thereby your website will be pulled whenever and where anything related to NGOs comes into the picture. Similarly, if your website concentrates on a commercial entity, then .com is the most preferred.
Domains map to the cloud service technically. Whether you have a private or shared domain, your website will avail the features accordingly. So, you need to pay close attention to the domain as well.
When it comes to authorization, you need to be careful to whom you give the options to make what changes in the website. When WordPress is involved, you will have the option of having the admin position, wherein you will have all the options to make huge changes on the website. Similarly, when you need to just give the option of updating content from time to time, then the editor role comes into the picture. So, while redesigning your website, taking all these into account will have an overall impact on the SEO ranking.
Content Optimization
Content is the recent bag of gold that contributes highly to the SEO ranking. Keyword stuffing can be used wisely in the place of content writing, which is an important criterion for rising in SEO ranking from Google Analytics’ point of view. Recently businesses are investing in the content strategizing area since it is a needed boost for the overall success of the business. Wordy paragraphs are cut short with the number of words limitations that come under the points to check for SEO ranking. Also, the meta description is written as crisply as possible. This is displayed on the google search right after the keywords are typed into the search bar. Today’s netizens are looking for the point information. So, your website contents must stay to the point.
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Customer-friendly UX
‘The first impression is the best impression’ they say. It is vital that you give a smooth user experience to your customers who visits your website. Right from the color theme to the minute animations that you code on your website matters. You need to redesign your website according to some general norms of your particular business. For example, if you are a business that provides website designing services, then the first thing customers will focus on your website is the design of your website itself because they need to feel confident that you will do a job in designing their website properly and keep up with the current trends. So, this is how you need to think while redesigning your website.
Social platforms’ link
Today the world has literally become a global village, thanks to the ‘go digital’ saga. Networking and socializing is important for any business and in order to facilitate that, you need to make yourself available on all social media platforms. Social media platforms come, create a buzz and die at some point in time. But, not all of them die, there are many platforms that still have their place and maintain their place in the market. So, being available on those social platforms directly aids in the successful running of your business.
While redesigning your website, you need to link your social media platform accounts to your website. This is a wise idea because it will make your customers updated with all your regular updates on all the social media platforms. Also, customers have a higher confidence level when they see regular updates on the official business pages. You need to pay close attention to social media marketing strategies as well from now on.
Technical elements to check
While redesigning your website, redirecting might be required. So, when redirects are needed, you need to know which redirect strategy to use when. 301 redirect strategy is a permanent one. When customers come looking for the old URL, this 301 makes it simple to redirect them completely without much loss of information and this is preferred by Google analytics as well. But, when the redirect is temporary, then, 302 redirect strategies come into the picture. Until the website under construction is ready to go live, customers will be redirected to a temporary website for a short period of time. Since this is temporary, you might use this while redesigning your website itself. This might have a negative impact on the SEO ranking, so think twice before using 302 redirects.
When updating your website, you need to update the XML sitemap as well so that while the redesigned website goes live, the structure of the site, website navigation along with the XML sitemap also stays consistent and will appear in the redesigned website. Also, make sure that all your backlinks stay updated during the process of website redesigning.
Conclusion
There are many tools to check the proper working of the website after it is redesigned. You can use the Google Console to check your website and maintain the traffic accordingly. Make sure to maintain the structure of the internal links. Crawl data comes in handy to carry out this task. While crawling, remember to have the metadata and the name of the files as it is once they have been audited for the SEO ranking strategy. Practice makes perfect, so evaluate and test your website any number of times after the redesign.
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