Address site redesign problems

Change is often good but in website redesign it more often results in lower search engine rankings, confused visitors and broken links.

There are many ways in which changing your website could have negative consequences on SEO – and it can frequently cause a drop in keyword rankings and a loss of inbound links. This is especially true if an existing site has been in place for a long time because your site already contains collateral that is indexed and linked to from third parties (inbound links) and these pages are frequently lost in redesigns. Many web design companies don’t put adequate effort into preserving existing links and pages that are performing well in search.

You need to carefully evaluate your existing site to discover which pages, resources and assets are being valued by users and search engines, and make sure these don’t disappear without warning. This doesn’t mean the design cannot change, but it does mean some housekeeping such as providing redirects – the technical equivalent of a change of address form at the post office. This means that when a user (or search engine) goes to http://mysite.com/great_ideas.html and it has subsequently become http://mysite.com/ideas/great.asp, they can still find what they are looking for.

In the book we discuss issues with changing assets, navigation and domain names.

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