We're planning a major website redevelopment - SEO Considerations?
-
We're currently planning a website rehaul, with a new site to be designed and implemented on our existing Drupal 7 platform.
I've outlined the following areas to consider:
- Listing out top content by traffic, conversions, ranking and bounce rates to ensure top content continues to get relevant links throughout site (in particular high internal PA links!).
- Maintaining a specific KW target for each page
- Ensuring on-page SEO guidelines remain (i.e. img alt tags, headings and page titles)
- Having a low page load speed
- Ensuring architecture of site is built around our keyword methodology
What else I need to be aware of?
I'm predicting a drop in traffic as this tends to follow redesigns but looking to make this as minimal as possible.
Sam
-
Try to isolate as many changes as possible.
Everyone wants to do a big splash relaunch, but unless you're a serious brand, you don't need to do some fancy huge explosive relaunch.
Each of these are big variables, and are best to not do all at once:
- Changing domain name
- Changing website design
- Changing website URL architecture
- Changing platform
The worst is when people try to do all of those at once! It seems that you're staying on Drupal. The above article mentioned by Dirk is very good.
A few things to always remember:
- Noindex/hide your development/staging site
- Always double check your robots.txt after launch
- Always double check your Meta Robots directive after launch
- Always 301 redirect page for page your important pages receiving links and traffic if those change
- Verify before and after everything in Analytics and Search Console
- Create a checklist of everything. Almost 100% of even the smartest people will miss at least one thing in a relaunch.
-
There is a very useful & detailed post on site migration on Moz - I used on two previous migrations and it worked great (no traffic drop at all) - check https://mza.seotoolninja.com/blog/web-site-migration-guide-tips-for-seos
Dirk
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How necessary is it to disavow links in 2017? Doesn't Google's algorithm take care of determining what it will count or not?
Hi All, So this is a obvious question now. We can see sudden fall or rise of rankings; heavy fluctuations. New backlinks are contributing enough. Google claims it'll take care of any low quality backlinks without passing pagerank to website. Other end we can many scenarios where websites improved ranking and out of penalty using disavow tool. Google's statement and Disavow tool, both are opposite concepts. So when some unknown low quality backlinks are pointing and been increasing to a website? What's the ideal measure to be taken?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
What is the average time table to boosting SEO rankings through a complete website frontend+backend refresh?
I am hoping someone who encountered a similar situation can help out. Here are the general details. Our company website is being rebuilt from the ground up - new copy, new information architecture, new theme, ideal URLs, data-driven research on search queries and keywords with an inbound marketing emphasis, CDN, the whole nine yards - as for several years under old management there was little emphasis on beating competition in the search results, or really on any of the fundamentals that matter. The only thing that cannot be reset, and will need to be tackled over time, is a link profile audit and weeding out the bad backlinks accrued over a decade. We are in a very small niche, and even with impeded website design, copy, content and misaligned architecture, we are still somewhat competitive vis-a-vis our competitors, just not top-3 triangle competitive for the terms that really matter. In addition, nearly all of our competitors do not (or at least do not appear to) optimize for SEO and UX, they just happened to choose to include terms in the copy that prospects would use when searching, rather than worrying about the semantics of branding (as in our old management's iron clad preference). Can someone here give an indication of when we would see rankings begin to improve in the search engine results pages upon completion and deployment of the new website? I understand I could be looking at up to a 6-month window, but I am looking for a definitive answer to tell my bosses, who may be expecting an immediate boost in the rankings.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NikeFire0 -
Django and SEO - Multicountry site - Is Django really SEO friendly?
Hi Everyone, Our client is requesting that we use Django for her project. I am really uneasy about this for several reasons. The client wants a multi-country site that is completely SEO friendly. I love Wordpress and if I had to do this project it would be a Wordpress site with WPML + Yoast plugins site. Questions Is Django SEO friendly and what "plugins" should I be using? Is there a multi-country plugin for Django that keeps or adds typical SEO features? Can you recommend any great articles? Any example sites would be GREATLY appreciated Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Carla_Dawson0 -
Is ok to add 'no follow' to every outbound link?
How do you handle outbound links from your site?.. do you no follow them all to be on the safe side?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nick-name1230 -
Images and SEO
Hi, I would like some opinions on the topic of using images for SEO. I have come across a few sites that I see have very few backlinks, but have decent pagerank and seem to rank well for certain keywords. One such site I looked at had very little content other than tons of images (It was a joke blog that focussed on funny images, funny pics etc) and now I am starting to question whether hotlinking images assists in SEO? are there any benefits to having someone using one of your images (hosted on your site) ? I do recall reading somewhere that someone hotlinking an image is akin to a link. Any truth in this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rightmove0 -
Will pages irrelevant to a site's core content dilute SEO value of core pages?
We have a website with around 40 product pages. We also have around 300 pages with individual ingredients used for the products and on top of that we have some 400 pages of individual retailers which stock the products. Ingredient pages have same basic short info about the ingredients and the retail pages just have the retailer name, adress and content details. Question is, should I add noindex to all the ingredient and or retailer pages so that the focus is entirely on the product pages? Thanks for you help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ArchMedia0 -
New Website.. From where to start with a SEO Plan ?
Hi.. We have got two SEO and link builders working here in the office, putting in efforts is not a problem. And we have been doing SEO for our websites since a long time and they all rank well. Since, I have signed up for SEOMOZ, which is the one stop with all the heavy duty SEO guys, so we would like to get some suggestions from the experts. Ok here is the question. We have launched a new website this week and we have got a new SEO client, whose website is 6 months old. 1. What should be a proper SEO plan for a new website ? Got any Plan PDF or Buleprint, which you can send me ? 2. For the client website , he is ranking on 4-7th pages for his 4 keywords. Whats should be the correct way or plan to start doing SEO for them and get them to the first page ? 3. I feel like, doing competitive analysis is lacking with us and we are not good at evaluating that step. Whats the bet way to do competitive analysis ? 4. We are looking to build more and more links to the website . Whats the best way to make links ? Got any SEOMoz Blog post link, which explain this better or any forum thread which has got the tricks for this ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | qubesys0 -
What's your best hidden SEO secret?
Don't take that question too serious but all answers are welcome 😉 Answer to all:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | petrakraft
"Gentlemen, I see you did you best - at least I hope so! But after all I suppose I am stuck here to go on reading the SEOmoz blog if I can't sqeeze more secrets from you!9