Considering a Website Redesign? Step one: Call your SEO firm

Website redesigns can be expensive, time intensive and often frustrating.  For a business website, it is crucial not to loose ground in terms of search engine optimization or have your site go down during transition.  What is the point of a new website if no one can find it or if visitors have trouble navigating your website once they do find it?

Search Engine Watch has an excellent article on how Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firms and Web developers should work together during redesign (see link below to read full article). I hear three frequent complaints from clients  when they have not consulted with us during site redesign.

The Top 3 SEO risks of website redesign:

• Losing position and prominence in search engine rankings
• Struggling with a new content management system (CMS) that is difficult to use
• Losing usability with new navigation that is different, but not necessarily better than before redesign

The benefit of having your SEO firm partner with your web developer throughout the website redesign process is that they eliminate these risks and avoid down time and costly mistakes.  An experienced SEO team can can help you throughout redesign by providing:

1. Information Architecture/Wireframe/Template Review. More than technically sound, you want your proposed architecture to be user friendly AND drive relevant  search traffic.

2.  CMS Review. Unless you are using Joomla, WordPress, Drupal or other  friendly systems, it is important to have your SEO firm review the proposed new CMS.  Many niche CMS platforms can be difficult to use for non-programmers or can actually hurt on-page optimization.

3. URL Transition/Redirect Strategy. It is vital to have a migration plan for a smooth transition to your newly designed site to avoid down time,  broken links, or missing pages.

4. Content Optimization. Your SEO firm can review new copy content during redesign to guide copywriters and give you a jump-start on optimization.

5. Final Review & debugging before site goes live.  SEO firms can review site from a search engine perspective and help locate broken links and other problems before going live.

Remember that Compliance is not Optimization

While a good web development firm should ensure SEO Compliance, they should not conduct optimization. They do not have the knowledge of your business or optimization expertise to conduct proper keyword research, measure & evaluate on-going analytics, or develop a content plan to generate traffic.

Read the Search Engine Watch article in full for more information on how SEO Firms and Web Developers should work together during web redesign.

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