A step-by-step guide to redesigning a website without affecting SEO

When a company plans to redesign its website, the code and pages are to be changed. This can affect the SEO of the website, which is not good. Here is a step-by-step process, which will help the company to redesign the website without affecting SEO.

Make a list of all the pages

When a website is being redesigned, lots of changes need to be made. The user should first make a list of all the URLs of his website. There are many plugins available, which can be used for the purpose.

Redesign the website on a temporary URL

The redesign must be done on a temporary URL. If it will be done on the existing one, it can affect the SEO as pages may not be displayed properly and other errors might occur. After making changes through the temporary URL, it can be shifted to the main website.

Test the website

Now copy the website to the temporary URL and check various aspects like broken links, CSS, page design, etc.

Do 301 redirects

The next step is to perform 301 redirects, which has to be done between old and new URLs. If the URL is being changed in the new website, 301 redirect is necessary. The user will not lose the SEO of the website if this step is performed. If this step is not performed correctly, the user may get 404 error on the search engine. The 301 redirects will redirect all the URLs to the new website and there will be no effect on the SEO.

Switch to the new website

After all the previous steps are performed, users can switch on the new URL. If the website is small, switching can be done easily but for a big website, the switching should be done in stages.

Use Google Webmaster Tools

This tool will help to check the broken links. If they exist, the user can make changes to rectify them. This will help the user to avoid any penalty.

Verify the verification status and resubmit

When a developer redesigns a website, he stops the search engine to detect the website through crawlers. If it has been done, then the crawler should be restarted. Then the developer should click Fetch as Google option on the crawler and then Fetch and Render.

Check the changes made

After transferring, the website to the new URL and activating the crawler, the next and the last step is to monitor the changes. The user can use various SEO tools to track the keywords used.