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Web Site Redesign: Avoiding A Category 5 Storm
September 23, 2005
A major redesign of your web site can hit your search engine rankings, traffic, and conversions like a category 5 hurricane. However, there are some critical things you can do to cool the waters and downgrade your redesign to a tropical storm.
Keep in mind that if your URLs are going to change, this will affect your search rankings, traffic, and conversions. But, if you take proper precautions both before and after your redesigned site launches, you'll weather the storm just fine.
Here are some important things to consider and do:
Keep The Faucet On
Make sure your design team creates a new custom 404 page. This will ensure you capture visitors who arrive from old page links at the engines instead of them getting a "Page Not Found". We recommend the 404 page be a sitemap so the visitor can choose exactly where they'd like to go. See our custom 404 page as an example.
Tell The Engines Where To Go
Remember that your old URLs are likely in the search engine's index. If these URLs change with your redesign, you have to tell the search engines where to find the new URLs. The best way to direct a search engine to a new page is with a 301 permanent redirect. If you want more details on how to do this, see James' post "Implementing a 301 Server-Side Redirect"
Don't Forget The SEO
Make sure your design team doesn't leave the SEO behind when they create new pages. Be sure that the optimization code and text content is not overlooked or stripped out when your new URLs are created.
Get Indexed
During the first few months after the redesigned site goes live, be sure to closely monitor Google, MSN, and Yahoo! to make sure the new pages get indexed correctly. If new pages are not indexed within the first few weeks, some manual search engine submissions may be needed.
Don't Forget Other Inbound Links
Take a close look at how other web sites link to you. If the pages they link to have new URLs, make sure to notify them so these links can be updated.
All posts by Doug Ausbury
posted by Doug Ausbury at September 23, 2005 1:50 PM
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Comments
You are very right, but can you please guide me if i use dynamic links for my new modified site then how can i redirect the old pages to the new ones. I have one solution :- can i redirect all old pages to one particular page like home page. would that solve my problem and not affect anything badly?
Thanks in advance
Posted by: Ashish K Arora at July 28, 2007 12:42 PM
Good post, thanks
Posted by: SEO Services at July 31, 2010 3:12 AM
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Posted by: lenen zonder bkr toetsing at August 3, 2010 4:44 PM
Wow that just about sums everything up
Posted by: Duteau@misolutionz.com at August 17, 2010 7:22 PM