The Importance of SEO in Website Redesign

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is how we get free traffic from search engines like Google and Bing. We use SEO to move a website further up the search results pages, so more people see it when searching the internet.

It’s really important to prioritise SEO when you first launch your small business website, but it’s even more important to take SEO into account when planning a redesign. 

A redesign is when you make large-scale changes to your site. We’re not talking about small tweaks like updating the logo or colour scheme. A full redesign means giving your site a completely new look by modifying the structure, radically overhauling the visual elements, streamlining, adding or removing content, changing the domain name or the structure of URLs, and updating the functionality. 

When making such big changes, it’s vital to make sure you know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, so your SEO isn’t negatively impacted causing you to lose traffic, backlinks and, ultimately, sales.

You might consider an overhaul if your website looks tired and outdated and you want to improve the overall look and user experience. Or you might want to improve its performance, speed, responsiveness, accessibility, or conversion rate. 

In this post, we take a closer look at ten reasons to consider a website redesign. 

The cost of a redesign will depend on the complexity of your site, whether you use a freelancer or an agency, and the amount of time it will take to complete your project. At We Make Magazines, the cost of a website redesign can range from £500 to £10,000. The average cost is around £2,000. We start with booking you in for a free consultation to understand your needs better and then we prepare a no-obligation quote. 

A website redesign can massively impact your SEO for the better when it’s done right, but it can be a disaster if it goes wrong. This is why it’s important to factor SEO in from the start – it should not be an afterthought. You could have the best-looking site in the world, but if it’s not optimised for search engines, nobody will find it and you could experience a significant loss of rankings, traffic and sales as a result. That means all your hard work on your previous site will be lost, and you will effectively be starting from scratch when it comes to search engines. 

Apart from the increased ranking, traffic and sales factors, there are other reasons why SEO should be part of your redesign. 

To ensure a good return on your investment

If you are investing in a new website, you want that outlay to work hard for you. You don’t want to spend money and then find you’ve dropped down the search engine rankings and lost traffic to competitors. The focus of a new site should be to improve your performance. 

To preserve or improve your current SEO rankings

Your previous website will have worked hard for you, even if it’s now in need of an overhaul. It will have built valuable backlinks from other sites which helps to build authority from Google’s point of view. Take care not to damage this authority when you work on the redesign. 

To help your business grow

When you invest in a new website, you do so because you’re hoping to reach more people and grow your business. This can only be achieved by making SEO part of the redesign strategy and this is why we don’t provide website redesign services without SEO at We Make Magazines. We do the job properly so you can get on with what you do best. 

SEO is a broad topic and there are many different elements to think about to ensure your new website is fully optimised. 

We created a checklist of the main SEO actions to incorporate into a redesign:

Audit your existing website

Carry out an audit on your current site so you can clearly see what works and what doesn’t. Only then will you be able to see where SEO can help.

Note the following metrics:

• Domain authority
• Keyword rankings
• Unique visitors
• Most visited pages
• Pages with the most backlinks and shares
• Bounce rate
• Time on site
• Contact form submissions
• Number of sales

Once you’ve completed the audit, you’ll know what has worked well and where you should make improvements. It’s important to keep any high-performing pages in the new design.

Set your SEO goals

Decide what you want your SEO efforts to do for you. What exactly are you looking to improve? Set some SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound) goals. Examples might be:

• Increase organic traffic by 15%
• Increase sales by 5%
• Increase contact form submissions by 20%

Optimise existing content

When you’re redesigning your site, it’s also a good time to optimise any existing content. Are all your pages properly optimised for the keywords you want to rank for? How fast is the site speed? 

Prune existing content

Which pages are dead wood or low-value that you can get rid of? These are not bringing any traffic because they are poor quality, out of date, or simply irrelevant. They can be removed or redirected to other pages. 

Plan your site’s architecture

User experience is essential, and this means you need to make sure your site is easy to navigate. Up to 60% of users will leave a website due to a poor navigation experience. Your pages should be organised in a logical way that makes it easy for users to find what they’re looking for. 

Set up 301 redirects

If you’re changing the domain name, dramatically updating the site structure, or the structure of URLs, it’s essential to set up 301 redirects. This ensures that any other sites that have created links to your website won’t send people to an error page once you change the URL. If this happens, you will lose valuable backlinks which will damage your SEO. 

Test your new website

Before making your new site live, test it thoroughly to make sure all your changes are working properly. You should test the following:

• Are all the navigation links clickable?
• Is it responsive on all devices?
• Are all the media elements loading properly?
• What is the page speed like?
• Does the contact form work?
• Are the purchasing pages working?

It might help to get someone who hasn’t been involved in the redesign to test the new site for you. Try giving them tasks to fulfil such as booking a table for next Wednesday, or sending an enquiry about your services and watch how easy it is for them to do it. This will help you understand if you have correctly mapped the customer journey on your website. 

Update your sitemap

Once your new site is live, you should update your XML sitemap and submit it to Google and Bing. The sitemap helps search engines to crawl your site and rank it more easily. A sitemap is like a floor plan of your site. It lists all the relevant URLs so search engine crawlers can understand the structure of your site and evaluate and rank it more easily.

It doesn’t matter what industry you are in, how big your business is, or what you sell, SEO is an essential part of a successful website redesign. It should be done with care and detailed planning, and be part of the redesign process from the beginning. Getting it right can help secure a good return on your investment, reach new customers and generate more sales.

We Make Media is a Devon web design company. We've been helping small businesses grow in Devon and the west country since 2010. If you’re interested in a website redesign for your business, we would be happy to discuss what you’re looking for and how we can help. Book your free discovery call.