Most web re-designs result in a dip in search rankings, which could have a knock-on effect on business. Alex Wares, Managing Director, Mediarun offers a 3-step guide to ensuring that a change in website doesn’t result in a loss of traffic…
In no other industry other than digital marketing has change and development been such a fundamental part of the survival of the fittest. The key difference in digital is that testing and expert advice is readily available for those seeking it.
However in many scenarios such advice is not leveraged and what appear progressive evolutionary steps ends up with counter productive side effects.
This dilema is particularly important to take in consideration when you are dealing with website migrations. As an agency dedicated to search we do get occasional requests from clients for our assesment, but more often than not the client, developers and designers crack on with what seems to be a fairly straight forward task of reskinning, restructuring and modernising a website. Effectively the next digital evolutionnary step for a business.
This is of particular interest to us because simply altering a website look and feel is potentially changing the way a search engine sees your site and actually placing the site in danger of unravelling months or possibly years of good SEO work.
For example the following are a sample of changes that can affect how your site is perceived by a search engine
• Tweaking URL extensions (for example to make it more appealing and easy to remember)
• Upgrading web design or IA (changing the navigation),
• Switching CMS platform
• Changing domain name
Three out of four of all web redesigns result in some form of dip in rankings on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). A typical website will gain anywhere from 50% to 85% of its web traffic from search engines like Google, therefore a slip in the rankings could potentially have catastrophic effects on business. With the right SEO migration advice this risk can be heavily mitigated against.
As a process SEO migration works in 3 stages;
1. Analysis
Understand where you are now. By having knowledge of how each of your pages ranks in the SERPs, and the value of their link equity, you can plan what is necessary for each page to maintain or even improve upon their rankings and traffic.
Consider the following when making your assessment:
• Traffic evaluation (ask yourself and evaluate the following)
What search engine brings the largest portion of ‘non-paid’ traffic
What are the monthly figures
How many keywords drive traffic on a monthly basis
• Define your high priority keywords (which ones drive most traffic but also iterations, don’t forget the longtail)
• Establish your top landing pages (what pages get most visitors with lowest bounce rate, consider transferring the copy as well as title tags, URL extensions and meta descriptions)
• Analysis and benchmark of existing link equity (export your links via a 3rd party tools like Opensiteexplorer or Google Webmaster tools)
2. Plan
Planning is vital, like in any other project all related tasks to the migration should be pre-planned and scheduled. The window of opportunity for change or site alteration is incredibly limited, especially when trying to avoid loss of rankings. You have to make sure that any team members and developers are on board, and are fully aware of what they need to be doing and when.
Key points that should be planned:
• Benchmark rankings and traffic of keywords
• Mapping your existing URLs on a like for like basis (Old vs. New)
• Set and prepare all your 301 rules
• Prepare a contactable list of your high quality links (you may want to change the destination URL if it’s being 301’d)
3. Implement
At this point you are ready to go live with your new website, hopefully all activities have been planned and 301s are ready to be rolled out. This is where a confident, experienced project manager becomes incredibly valuable. It is critical to have someone leading the development team and ensuring everything is completed in time, given the strict time limitation. As stressful as it may be, this is what needs doing:
• Collaboration with Web Development teams is crucial.
• Roll your 301s
• Cross checking HTTP status headers
• Assistance repurposing links
• Controlling and monitoring
To ensure none of your SEO equity is wasted, it is strongly advised that you employ an SEO specialist agency to plan and implement a successful migration. By getting this right, you can enjoy the fruits of a fresh and modern website whilst keeping the same authority and structure that pulled traffic to your site.
By Alex Wares
Managing Director
Mediarun
www.mediarunsearch.co.uk
Mediarun will be speaking on this subject at AdTech: 14:30, 21st September in the Reach & Target Theatre, National Hall, Olympia.
