Redesigning a website is an exciting endeavor that can rejuvenate your brand's online presence. However, without careful planning, it can inadvertently harm your search engine rankings. Integrating modern search engine optimization (SEO) best practices into your redesign strategy is crucial to maintain and enhance your site's visibility. Here’s a comprehensive guide to ensure your website redesign aligns with current SEO standards.
Conduct a Comprehensive SEO Audit
Before initiating the redesign, have a thorough SEO audit of your existing site performed by a qualified agency. This process involves evaluating elements such as current keyword rankings, metadata (titles, descriptions, headers), technical SEO health, backlink profile, and content performance. Assessing your site's SEO performance establishes a benchmark for the redesign’s impact.
Establish Clear SEO Objectives
Define SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely) goals for your SEO strategy. Examples include increasing organic traffic by 20% within six months, reducing bounce rates by improving content readability and user experience, or boosting conversion rates through improved navigation and UX/UI design. There are many ways to measure success for your new site but it’s important to have defined goals ahead of time. Clear objectives will guide your redesign decisions and help assess post-launch success.
Partner with SEO-Savvy Design Professionals
Choose a redesign team that possesses a strong understanding of SEO principles. Ensure they follow Google’s Core Web Vitals recommendations for page experience and implement SEO-friendly coding practices. They should also optimize images, JavaScript, and CSS to improve site speed while prioritizing current WCAG accessibility standards for better usability and rankings. A knowledgeable team will prevent common pitfalls that could negatively impact your site's search performance.
Optimize Site Architecture and Content
A well-structured site architecture enhances both user experience and search engine crawlability. This is an important consideration when soliciting website redesign quotes, as the number of pages often contributes to the project cost. Key steps include:
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Planning individual pages for each topic you are hoping to rank on.
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Creating a clear, keyword-rich URL structure for better indexing and user navigation.
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Strengthening internal links to improve navigation and link equity.
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Conducting keyword research and optimizing on-page elements like headings, alt tags, and structured data.
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Avoiding duplicate content by using canonical tags and eliminating unnecessary pages.
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Improving content quality by enhancing readability, adding multimedia, and ensuring content is authoritative and engaging.
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Understanding AI best practices when it comes to copywriting as well as overall site strategy.
Add Schema Code
When redesigning a website, you want your site to be easily found! That’s where schema comes in. As AI continues to transform search, schema code is becoming increasingly effective in delivering important website content to search engines. So, with all that in mind – you’re probably wondering, where do I begin? First, it’s important to identify your priorities and align the right type of schema code to your website accordingly. Are you wanting to improve your website’s visibility for local-based searches? LocalBusiness schema would be a great addition to your location pages! Have a blog that you’d like to get some more eyes on? Try BlogPosting schema! Hoping to encourage some more checking account applications? There’s even a BankAccount schema code that’s specifically meant for that product.
Make sure you test each code as you write and add it to your site! There are websites available that will test your schema for free. Once your site is launched, you will want to test each page that has schema code to ensure everything is still properly in place.
Implement Technical SEO Best Practices
Technical aspects play a crucial role in SEO, so it’s important to address the following:
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Page Speed Optimization – Compress images, minify code, use lazy loading, and enable browser caching. Use Google PageSpeed Insights to test and improve page speed but make sure you are aware that third-party code can negatively impact your score too.
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Mobile-First Design – Ensure a seamless experience across desktop and mobile devices with responsive design.
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Secure Website (HTTPS) – SSL certificates are a ranking factor and a trust signal for users.
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Schema Markup – As discussed previously, you can add structured data to improve search engine understanding and enable rich snippets with eligible schema properties.
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Core Web Vitals Compliance – Optimize for Google’s ranking factors:
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Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – Ensures the most significant page element loads within 2.5 seconds for a better user experience.
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First Input Delay (FID) – Measures interactivity by ensuring a page responds quickly to user inputs within 100 milliseconds.
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Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – Prevents unexpected page shifts by maintaining visual stability and minimizing sudden content movements.
Develop a URL Redirect Strategy
Redesigns almost always involve URL changes. To preserve rankings and prevent 404 errors, create a redirect map before launch, implement 301 redirects for any changed or removed URLs, and test them thoroughly to ensure they function properly and retain SEO value.
Additionally, update internal links to point directly to the new URLs rather than relying on redirects, as this improves crawl efficiency. Submit an updated XML sitemap to search engines to help them discover changes faster and monitor Google Search Console for crawl errors and indexing issues post-launch.
Note that if you are changing your domain, that opens up another set of considerations and best practices when it comes to redirects.
Update XML Sitemap and Robots.txt
Once the new site is live, your CMS should dynamically generate an XML sitemap page. This URL should be immediately submitted to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to help search engines discover and index the new structure efficiently. Additionally, check the robots.txt file to ensure search engines can crawl important pages and that irrelevant pages are disallowed from indexing.
It is also smart to perform a site audit to identify any crawl errors, orphan pages, or unexpected noindex tags that might prevent proper indexing. Monitor Google Search Console for indexing issues, coverage reports, and mobile usability errors. Finally, update your structured data markup (if applicable) to align with the new site structure, ensuring rich results are preserved in search rankings.
Monitor, Test, and Optimize Post-Launch
After launching the redesigned site, continuously monitor its performance. Key actions include:
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Check for Crawl Errors – Use Google Search Console to identify and fix issues like broken links or misconfigured redirects.
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Analyze Traffic and Rankings – Compare new data to pre-redesign benchmarks to assess impact.
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User Experience Testing – Gather feedback and use heatmaps or A/B testing to refine navigation and conversion elements.
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Track Core Web Vitals – Ensure ongoing compliance with Google’s page experience signals.
A website redesign presents a valuable opportunity to improve not only aesthetics but also SEO performance. By following these best practices, businesses can ensure that their new website maintains or improves search rankings, enhances user experience, and supports long-term digital success. Are you considering a website redesign or wondering how it might impact your SEO strategy? Contact ZAG so we can assist with your marketing efforts.