Website Redesign Strategy and Implementation
Kristin Turner: Hi I’m Kristin Turner and I’ here with Kate Van Ravenhorst, an Account Manager here at Apogee Search. Today, Kate is going to provide us with the few best practices and website redesign. Kate, would you begin by telling us what the motivating factor would be for a company implementing website redesign?
Kate Van Ravenhorst: Sure there are a variety of reasons but it could be that they’re having a product launch or changing some of their service offerings. It might be that they want to do some rebranding or having new company name and it might just be that they’re looking for an updated and refreshing site.
Kristin Turner: Once they’ve made the decision to implement or redesigns were should they begin?
Kate Van Ravenhorst: Well, for an SCS standpoint you definitely want to consider the organization of your content. You want to avoid having content that can potentially compete for some of the same keywords. Some of this can be managed with tags I’m linking but you also might want to consider putting those pages on different levels within the site hierarchy as a search engines typically assigned to higher value to higher level pages.
Kristin Turner: Great. I understand that website page and reputation positively endpoint search rankings. How can you maintain site value through redesign?
Kate Van Ravenhorst: Well, you want to preserve your existing URL structure if possible. That’s always a good idea to his logical folder names and incorporate your keywords where appropriate. I also want to redirect internal links on the old site to their appropriate page of the new site. You definitely want to utilize three or one permanent redirects. These are considered search engine friendly and it’s going to guide your users to the appropriate page and tells search engines to attribute the value of the old page to the new. If users happen to arrive at a page of your old site either through a bookmark or a typing URL indirectly you want to avoid having them in kind of four years.
Kristin Turner: How can you ensure that a search engine will find your new site?
Kate Van Ravenhorst: You’re going to want to use site maps with an html site map. This is going to allow you users to access and navigate your site more easily and they will also help the search engines crawl your site more completely through an html site map which is designed specifically for the search engines. It’s going to alert the search engines that are new pages on your site.
You want to sign up for a Google web master tools account as well. This is going to alert you to any index thing problems that the search engines might have with your site as well as keep your price of any date. General diagnostics on your site, also this will help accelerate the index in any of your website.
Kristin Turner: Are there any additional elements to consider when implementing a website redesign.
Kate Van Ravenhorst: Well, you’ll definitely need to reconfigure your tracking. For instance if you’re using Google analytics you want to preserve the historical data of the old site as well as create a new profile to track the activity on your new site.
Kristin Turner: Well, are there any important things to keep in mind when planning a website redesign on top of the tips you’ve provided already?
Kate Van Ravenhorst: Well, I will just say be aware that you will most likely experience some fluctuation in rankings with the new site design but by remembering this tips you can help medicate any negative effects.
Kristin Turner: Right thank you very much for your time and your knowledge we appreciate it Kate and if you’re looking for anymore search engine marketing information visit us at Apogee- Search.com.
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