We’ll go over a full guide on how to revamp your website without impacting SEO in today’s article.
1. Create a list of all the pages from the previous website.
The first step is to obtain your website’s URL structure. Redesigning entails a slew of modifications, including a reorganization of URLs. As a result, it’s critical to back it up; otherwise, you risk harming your website’s ranking.
Plugins can be used to obtain the URL structure. You can crawl the website and then download the updated sitemap if you’re using the Yoast SEO plugin.
2. A temporary URL must be used during the redesign.
Redesigning an existing website is never a good idea. It has the potential to annoy visitors and bring you trouble in the long term. The best course of action is to copy your website and save it as a temporary URL. After that, you may start making modifications. Another option is to change the domain once all of the needed redesign modifications have been completed.
If you think you might have trouble with this, you can always ask your developer for assistance. You might also hire a hosting firm to handle it for you. It’s critical that you ask your hosting provider to handle the setup for you since this will prevent you from future problems.
3. Put the redesigned website to the test.
You’ve successfully copied your old website into the new one.
However, before you begin your website redesign, it is a good idea to conduct an end-to-end audit. You should look for broken links, features, CSS, and other areas of your website during this checkup.
You can also use XENU, a free program that will find all of your website’s broken links.
4. Implement 301 redirects correctly.
The next step is to use 301 redirects to link the old and new URLs together. For example, suppose your former website had an “About Us” page with the URL “www.yourwebsite.com/aboutus.html.”
If your designer updated the URL to “www.yourwebsite.com/about-us.html” during the redesign, it’s best to use proper 301 redirects to guarantee that both URLs work and that you don’t lose any SEO marketing benefits from the prior URL.
The search engine will return 404 web pages not found if you don’t perform it correctly. The old URL will be redirected to the new one using 301 redirects. This is the technical method of informing the search engine that the URL has changed. Your previous SEO efforts will not be penalized by Google.
The .htaccess file can be used to add redirects. The code looks something like this.
5. Transfer to the new website
It’s time to transition to the new website once everything has been finalized, including the design and redirection. If your website is large, you can also make gradual changes in phases.
6. Make use of Google Webmaster Tools.
The next step is to double-check that everything has gone well so far.
You can do so by using tools like Google Webmaster. You can use this tool to make sure there are no broken links. If any broken links are discovered, it is recommended that you fix them as soon as possible to avoid a penalty.
7. Verify the status of the verification and re-submit
According to FourCreeds, Stopping the search engine from crawling the website is a frequent practice among web developers and designers. If that’s the case, you’ll need to restart your website’s crawler. You must use the “Fetch as Google” option under the crawler to verify the status. When you’re finished, select the “Fetch and Render” option. If both tests are successful, your website is fully crawlable.
It’s also a good idea to see if the updated website has been verified. You can do so by logging into Bing’s or Google’s respective webmaster’s tools. If your website isn’t verified, redo it and claim it.
Finally, click the “submit to index” button to re-submit your website URL to Google.
8. Robot.txt
There’s a potential your robot.txt file will get corrupted during the makeover. You can use the “robot.txt” option under crawl to see whether it has.
9. Submit a sitemap
Submit the website XML to Bing and Google now that your website has a fresh and changing structure. Your new website will be crawled within hours of being submitted.
10. keep an eye on the changes.
Finally, keep an eye on the changes and keep an eye out for any possible growth. Keep an eye on the ranks of your most important keywords. There are a variety of SEO tools that can help you maintain track of these keywords. If you see a significant shift in your SEO, try to figure out why this is occurring and come up with a remedy if your website traffic is slowing down.
For at least two to three months, you should keep an eye on your website.
