The Greatest SEO Mistakes to Eliminate During Website Restructuring

When you are redesigning your website, it is not enough to take care of the aesthetic parameters with respect to user experience and visual experience. The value that you provide to your users is of substantial importance.

An effective website redesign will comprise superior user experience, visual appeal, along with rendering organized information that can be conveniently understood and accessed. Visibility constitutes the other side of this. Aesthetics is of no use if your website cannot be found at the time users look for it. Moreover, if your website lacks intuitive navigation or information that can be easily comprehended, the beauty does not matter. To be useful in every way, the website should be intact in terms of form and functionality.

Given this, it is important to talk about Search Engine Optimization, which, although not as glamorous as visual appeal, is one of the major contributors of an effective online presence and brand recall. You simply cannot do away with SEO. If you are considering revamping your website, here are the five major prime SEO mistakes that should be avoided.

• Not Considering SEO from the Very Beginning

It is not a wise thing to make SEO an afterthought, since making alterations to an already developed site can bring in a lot of work, resulting in sub-optimal optimization. SEO rankings can be greatly affected by navigation and architecture, so it is advisable to employ an expert SEO team from the start.

• Ignoring an Audit of the Existing Site

During website redesign, it is important to gather insights regarding the type of pages and content which are successful in driving traffic. Hence, create a yardstick and collect information. This will immensely help you to modulate the website redesign in line with SEO requirements. The following points should be taken into account:

• Average number of unique visits or unique visitors on a monthly basis
• Keywords leading to high rank and driving traffic and leads
• The number of indexed pages
• Count of inbound linking domains
• Number of pages generating traffic

On the whole, the website pages with incoming links, possessing the highest page rank should be reviewed in combination with the traffic generating keywords. The team engaged in website redevelopment should be informed to ensure that the vital pages are not deleted or removed when the fresh layout is designed.

• Failing to Establish 301 Redirects

It indicates a permanent redirect from a particular URL to another. In order to retain the SEO juice from the old URLs in the new ones, it is essential to consider 301 redirects during URL restructuring, domain name switching or content consolidation as components of website redesign.

• Not Taking Into Account the URL Structure

URL restructuring in line with page and content relevancy is a significant aspect to consider. In case your URL has unrelated mentions which are not in line with the page content, a restructure must be considered.

• Not Going For Responsive Website Design

It is imperative for the website to cater to a range of devices from which it would be accessed. In case of mobile-optimized sites, Google gives preference to the responsive configuration. It is the most effective means to offer the users a delightful search and browsing experience. When you go for responsive web design, the same URLs exist across different devices, comprising the same HTML code. Only the CSS styling varies. With responsive configuration, Google finds it more convenient to retrieve content or crawl pages. Remember that responsive design is not only about creating content adaptable across devices, but also about rendering the best user experience with most appropriate content.