How to Plan a Website Redesign Without Losing SEO Traffic

To actualize a redesign is a thrilling endeavor. It is the time when brands reshape or rehash themselves, make general design modifications, and implement new technical stuff. Simultaneously, it has now become one of the most risky phases of search. Firms storming into redesigns with bells and glittering buttons have discovered only later on that their organic traffic has considerably dropped the minute the redesign started. The irony is if the redesign breaks SEO alongside the effort for future growth.

The problem now in view is how you can successfully redesign your website and not lose any SEO-generated traffic. This can be done by treating the redesign as if it were a migration-where creativity and technical structure interact harmoniously rather than trying to defeat one another.

Setting the Environment: Why Redesigns Make SEO Suffer

Since so much changes on a website in a significant redesign, the underlying elements, which are URLs, navigation flow, site architecture, content structure, and even metadata, go through a radical transformation. Search engines depend so much on these elements to comprehend and rank your site. If some of these elements are taken away or altered so dramatically that they are not mapped properly, then the content, according to the search engine, no longer exists. This is where the crow losses start.

To make sure it may redesign with an SEO blessing, SEO considerations have to be tucked into design considerations and vice versa. While most experienced webmasters can very well understand the balance between the two, SEO experts differ here in knowledge available to professional services. Hearing how, within some months of climbing the ladder by hard earned rankings, a small entity like a missing redirect or a delayed load time had snatched all of it again is probably one such service's best educational experience.

Step 1: Get Everything in Place

It is essential to rehearse the entire canvas and know exactly where you stand. Before even considering layouts, colours or new pages, one needs to understand what exactly supports the current SEO performance. The foundation of data must be laid out for a redesign—it can never start from assumptions. Without data, all else is 'guesswork'.

Deep analysis is comprised of:

• Pages that yield the maximum traffic

• Keywords currently ranking

• Which backlinks point to which URLs

• Estimated user attention span for content

• Pages that convert

The audit shall serve as the foundation of the fresh website. For this reason, many

brands opt to have an expert web development specialist in collaboration with an SEO specialist who will ensure that this audit is properly documented. When you identify what is working in the current environment, the foundation won't be broken.

Step 2: A content mapping strategy is to be put in practice.

The presiding phase of a redesign will be a lively time for the flow of new ideas. With such liveliness, considerations like a new page design, a concise blog structure, or an enclosure around the service menu become very appealing...until the URL construct gets destroyed.

Mapping old URLs to new ones before the development process could be a way to limit potential SEO loss. This way, every page rank maintains its identity; even if a total reconsideration and overhaul of the layout on formerly existing pages are done, the current convincing copy loses none of its former rankings. The image here is that of people renovating a full house from scratch because one can redo everything, but that street address, which directs the public to your URL.

Missing content mapping in many projects is one of the biggest reasons why a few of their traffic rankings drop. Suddenly, some of the best blog pages or product pages or service pages are no longer available. Correct mapping and everything can very well remain searchable.

Step 3: Design Redesigning Process Built on SEO-Not After

A misnomer found in so many owners is that they build an entire website and finally hire an SEO agency to 'do the necessary SEO.' But by that time, Noah's Ark already would have sunk. SEO should be given a thought even when making the plans, because major optimization depends on structural decisions—navigation hierarchy, mobile responsiveness, URL logic, image optimization, and internal linking.

Examples:

• Heavy animations in the design may slow the page speeds.

• Indexing processes could suffer if some essential content is concealed behind expanding sections.

• CTAs moving could completely reverse the user performance signals.

Having a thorough collaboration of the experienced web developers and SEO professionals from the initial point onward ensures that design and performance complement each other.

Step 4: Preparing a Robust Redirection Plan

However careful you might be in your planning, a few URLs are going to change; this is unavoidable. Although people can still find you through Google or other search engines, you can avoid traffic loss by redirecting via a 301 redirect. It is a plan that ensures that all versions of your URL get indexed automatically by the search engine when they are accessed. With these correctly generated alternates of your URL, the design looks normal to the arbitrary keyword while authority from one page is transferred to the 404 page.

A well-kept redirect plan needs to contain:

• 1:1 redirects from one original URL to the correct URL

• No redirect chains

• Correct canonical tags

• Fast indexing of updated pages

This is an oft-forgotten foundation because many webmasters weigh a lot toward design and neglect this part. Yet a good web development company is always insistent upon keeping one's platform developed properly.

Step 5: Keep Core Content Consistent

You can reconstruct the overall impression, design, and user experience but probably not the particulars of the website's content. Search engines have already registered your site as being relevant to certain keywords. If, in redesigning, you recast everything, there is a chance of that relevance being lost in translation.

But content can still be improved during the rebuilding process: weeding out some poor pages, inserting a few neglected keywords, or clarifying other information. Don't shunt every last detail from the aforementioned pages! The structure of those emotively significant pages will remain the same. Follow the heading hierarchy, keyword themes, and internal linking layout.

Step 6: Test this Perfect Website in the Production Environment

In this respect conducting an official launch without going through enough tests will be as injudicious as putting a machine into work without making sure the power lines are intact. Here are some things your team needs to evaluate in the staging environment-

• Page speed

• Broken links

• Mobile responsiveness

• Indexing issues

• Redirect accuracy

• Missing metadata

This is the stage where everything is secured before the website is exposed to the world. Most SEO companies emphasize this element even more because unless this is done, the real-time ranking could suffer grievous damage.

Step 7: Monitoring Post-live Performance

The first month post-live site launch is a very useful time. Watch the rank for keywords, the crawl errors, the site speed, the search console in notifications, user engagement. If you catch the drop very early in the cycle, fixing the drop is easy. The root of most SEO losses from a redesign are that teams do not do any monitoring of the site after launch believing everything is fine.

While the website developers should look out for technical issues, the SEO expert should monitor indexing and ranking behaviour and ensure there is no deviation.

Why the Planning Matters More than the Redesign Itself.

Pretty designs without any traffic are like a store without any visitors. The actual power of redesigning is when the new visuals are weaved with the strength of existing SEO. Sites maintaining or even showing increase in traffic post redesign are only cases of well-planned work.

Following the same lines, experienced web development agencies would work along with reliable SEO firms, making sure that creativity and stability are nurtured. It transforms into a partnership wherein the web designer, web developer, SEO expert, and others are working toward the same cause—to construct a modern website that maintains its organic visibility.

Redesigning need not be risky. With the proper plan, it becomes an opportunity to increase the brand, upgrade the user experience, as well as improve the site performance for the better in the long term.

Author Bio:

Bhumi Patel has vast experience in Project Execution & Operation management in multiple industries. Bhumi started her career in 2007 as an operation coordinator.  After that she moved to Australia and started working as a Project Coordinator/ Management in 2013. Currently, she is the Client Partner - AUSTRALIA | NEW ZEALAND at Magneto IT Solutions - a leading Shopify development agency, where she works closely with clients to ensure smooth communication and project execution also forming long term partnerships. Bhumi obtained a Master of Business Administration (MBA) in Marketing & Finance between 2005 and 2007.