If you are planning to launch a new version of
your website, you will need to take some steps to ensure that you do not damage
your search engine rankings in the process. When you update your website,
especially if you decide to change your domain, these changes can potentially
have negative impacts on SEO. You can avoid these problems by carefully
planning the update process. Here is a step-by-step guide to help you update
your website.
The first thing that you will want to do is start
by making a list of all of the URLs that need to be updated. You can use your
sitemap to retrieve a list of these pages. There are also online software
tools, including Google Webmasters, that can be used to crawl your website in
order to generate a list of pages. Once you have this list available, you need
to check it to make sure that all of the links are viable links and that there
are no broken links or pages that you simply do not want to include in the
upgrade.
2. Check Inbound Links
Your SEO strategy depends on the inbound links
that point to your website. As a result, you will need to perform an inbound
link audit that will determine which direct links need to be updated. You
should make sure that you contact the webmaster for each inbound link and
ensure that they update the old links on their site. If it is not possible for
you to reach everyone because of a large number of links, you should make sure
to establish 301 redirects for all of the old links in order to point them to
the new URLs on your updated site.
3. Update Your Content
In addition to updating the design of your site,
you should also make sure to update the content on your site. Review all of the
existing pages to ensure that there is no content that is outdated. Is your
current SEO strategy meeting your needs? Check the analytics data for your
website to make sure that your current plan is working. You may want to consider
updating the keywords that you are targeting on certain low ranking pages.
Although it might be tempting, try to avoid
unnecessarily deleting pages of your site. There may be pages that are having a
greater impact on your current rankings than you might assume at first glance.
However, if you find duplicate content on your site, do a 301 redirect of the
content pages to the correct version of the pages. In the future, avoid
creating pages that contain mostly similar content.
As you select new design for your website, make
sure that the new theme offers improvements over your previous theme in terms
of UX, technical SEO, and more. You should also make sure that your site design
is mobile-friendly. If you use a CMS platform, you may also want to consider
changing or upgrading. You may find that updating your CMS can provide greater
security and SEO benefits.
If you fail to note the importance of a quality
site design on your search rankings, you could inadvertently lower your
rankings. Therefore, you should choose your new site's design carefully and
make sure that you test it with SEO tools in order to uncover any errors or
page optimization issues before you deploy the updated site.
By creating a strategic plan to update your
website, you can improve your rankings and ensure that the upgrade doesn’t hurt
the work that you have done so far.
Infintech Designs is a New Orleans based SEO
& Web Design company. They provide data driven, measurable internet
marketing campaigns with trackable results. Brian Hong and his small team of
SEO ninjas are dedicated to increasing their client’s search engine visibility,
leads, and sales online.
Keywords:
pages, site, website, links, sure, update, design, content, rankings, need,
list, updated
Description:
a step-by-step guide to updating your website if you are planning to launch a
new version of your website, you will need to take some steps to ensure