Website design has evolved over the years, with new technologies coming to the forefront. With website redesign becoming a common phenomenon, SEO analysts often find it a daunting task to keep the website ranking up. The fact remains that every website redesign does have a significant impact on website SEO. This is why it is critical to keep certain aspects in mind while redesigning a website.

If you plan your website redesign properly in conjunction with best practices of SEO, then it can present a great opportunity to address website hierarchy issues, SEO and optimization issues as well as aesthetics of your online property. Let us go through some of the crucial factors to keep in mind before jumping on the redesign bandwagon.

  • Do not tinker with URL’s structure and especially pages those are ranking well. Often when we are redesigning a website, we tend to move certain modules of the website, which changes the URL structure. This can have massive repercussion on the ranking of those pages and the search results would give 404 error.
  • Add 301 redirection to old URLs. As stated in the earlier point, while redesigning a website one must not tinker with URL structure. However, if it cannot be avoided, then you must add a 301 redirection to new URLs.
  • Optimize the Meta tags, header tags, and alt tags carefully. When your website goes under the knife, for a redesign, it is critical to ensure that all the tags and keywords are optimized properly. These things have a huge impact on your website ranking.
  • Do not forget to submit new XML sitemap on the website. After the redesign, you must never forget to submit the new XML sitemap, which would define the new website hierarchy.
  • Do not change the content if you are already ranking well. Many of the times, business owners tend to update the content while redesigning the website. It is not a good practice if your web pages are already ranking well. Any change in the content would surely affect the SEO of that page, and if you have a good ranking, there is no point in fiddling with the content.

The common practice among website owners is to wait until the website redesign incomplete to start working on SEO. This can, however, lead to an expensive and time-consuming process that could have been easily implemented during the redesign. The more practical and better option would be to hire an SEO agency that looks at the current SEO rankings and advises on best practices for migration, frontend design, and content.

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