How to redesign a website without losing SEO effects?

Trends in website design, construction, and appearance are dynamically changing. So, to ensure that a company’s website always follows current trends or does not look outdated, it’s a good idea to keep both content and visual updates.

However, what about when our site has been positioned successfully for some time? Google’s algorithm likes sites that are “alive” and regularly developed, but a complete change without following the rules related to SEO may result in losing most of the results achieved so far.

There is no need to change the site.

A rather glaring example is the Rossmann store’s website. In 2018, a new version of this online drugstore’s website was launched, but as a result (most likely) of the failure to implement a proper redirection map, in just one month, the site’s organic visibility dropped from a ceiling of 50,000 keywords in the Top10 to less than 8,000. The company managed to rebuild it only after three years.

The case of the Rossmann store is a rather drastic example, but it is not isolated. Many companies, both large and small, continue to lose organic visibility, and thus traffic and sales of products and services, because when launching a new site, they forget to take into account how search engine algorithms will react to this change.

The company’s new site is not a good one.

Is it possible to prevent declines in a site’s organic visibility when switched to a new version?

It is basically impossible to completely prevent drops in a site’s organic visibility when running a new version. However, there are a number of countermeasures we can take to make these drops as small as possible and last as short a time as possible.

Declines will always occur in this type of situation. This is because a search engine robot that visits our new website will receive a set of completely different information than it did on its previous visit, so it must reindex each URL again, which, as practice now shows, takes a long time.

Additionally, the previous version of our site was positioned for specific keywords, embedded in a specific context and location of the site, which Google considered the best among the search results and therefore placed our www in a high position. Replacing the site may entail that the algorithm will “change its mind” and what we present in the new version will no longer meet its requirements.

What changes to a website can affect its organic results?

What actions should be taken when redesigning our website to maintain its existing SEO results largely depends on the extent of the changes we make. We can distinguish several major types of changes that affect SEO to varying degrees:

• Changing the site’s graphic design while maintaining its existing structure—If the purpose of our changes to the site is only to refresh its appearance without interfering with the URL structure or changing the layout of the existing content, this will have the least impact on organic visibility, and in many cases, basically zero impact. In this case, we do not need to take any major action to maintain the effects of positioning.

• Modification of the technology used to create the site (e.g., changing the CMS system or e-commerce platform)—this type of modification usually also entails a change in the URL of the site in question, which always leads to fluctuations in search results and the need for the search engine algorithm to re-index the entire site.

• Changing the content on the page—The content on the page contains the keywords we are positioning it for, so removing them, moving them to another location, or placing them in a completely different context will obviously impact the organic positions. This impact does not necessarily have to be negative, but these types of changes done incompetently can lead to significant drops.

• Total website change – this will obviously have the biggest impact on our visibility. By a complete change of the site, we mean a change in the appearance and layout of the content, a change in the graphic design, a change in the structure of the site that will result in a new URL tree, and very often also a change in the technology in which it was written. This is the case in which we will have to take the most measures to preserve the positioning effects developed.

What actions to take to prevent drops in organic results associated with website changes

• Verify if our planned changes to the site necessarily require URL changes

Most drops and various kinds of problems related to loss of organic positions when changing a website usually result from changing URL addresses between the old and new versions of the site. For a well positioned website, the search engine algorithm assigns specific keywords to specific url addresses, if these disappear anyone who visits the link will receive a “404 – page not found” response. In such a case, the customer will not get the content they were looking for, and the search engine robot will remove our site from a high position for the keyword. The solution is to keep the existing link structure or 301 redirects between the old and new URL addresses.

• Prepare a redirection map

Redirection map is a juxtaposition of the entire list of url’s from the old version of the site, with the list of corresponding URL’s in the new site. The purpose of preparing this summary is to indicate which addresses should be redirected using a permanent 301 redirect from the old version to the new one.

A properly implemented redirection map will result in both the user of our site and the search engine robot hitting a url that no longer exists from the search results, not receiving a 404 error page, but automatically landing on a new subpage related to the keyword they were looking for.

It may happen that some of the URL addresses from the old site contained content that is no longer relevant, which we do not want to move to the new site. Therefore, the phrases for which they appeared are no longer relevant to our business. In order to avoid the occurrence of error 404, it is worth redirecting them to subpages similar in subject matter or simply to the home page.

Preparing a redirection map can be a lengthy and rather tedious task for a large website. In a situation where the structure of the old and new sites differ dramatically, manual matching of the old addresses with the new ones may be the only solution. However, this is a task that must be performed and then implemented in parallel with the launch of the new version of the site. So that the search engine robot indexing the new site sees the redirects right away.

If this is not done, the robot scanning our site will hit 404 errors, which will result in a loss of organic positions in the near future. As we know, this leads to a loss of traffic and ultimately sales from Google search.

• Update sitemap.xml file

Changing the website’s structure involves preparing a sitemap. XML file that takes into account the new URL. It is imperative that we “fire up” the new version of the website already with the new sitemap file posted so that the search engine robot can easily index it right away. You also need to remember to update the address of the sitemap.xml file in the Google Search Console panel.

• Appropriate placement of keywords in new content or in the new site structure

If our changes to the site include a significant intrusion into the content or a complete overhaul of the content, we must consider the placement of our most important keywords in the new content

First, we should determine the phrases that generate us organic traffic/transactions, that is, those for which we cannot lose high position. Having the list ready, we need to consider their appropriate placement in the new site structure. Then, these keywords should be taken into account in creating SEO-optimized content for the site.

• Meta data update

Changing the URL structure of our site will very often involve creating new meta titles and meta description descriptions. Before starting a new site, it is necessary to establish a new pattern of automatically created titles check which descriptions from the old site we will be able to transfer to the new one, and fill in all the missing ones so that Google does not attribute sentences selected by it from the content of the site in search results.

• Check Core Web Vitals

When preparing a new website version, we must not forget to meet the requirements of the various Core Web Vitals, as they now have a huge impact on our website’s organic performance. The new site should be checked with the Page Speed Insights tool to find out what score we are achieving and, if necessary, improve the various elements according to the guidelines Google will present to us.

• Monitor the status of the site in Google Search Console after making changes

Google Search Console is the only place where Google contacts us to indicate what’s wrong with our site. After launching a new version of the site, it’s a good idea to monitor what information appears in the GSC panel on a daily basis. This will allow us to quickly catch potential errors, sub-pages missed in redirects, or URL addresses that have not been indexed by Google. This will allow us to react quickly, so we will definitely increase the chance of maintaining organic positions.

Google Search Console is also an excellent tool for verifying that keyword positions are not declining. Thanks to the analysis of position data, we can quickly catch which phrases have “suffered” examine the cause of this state of affairs and quickly fix it.

• Repeat SEO audit after all changes have been made

When we have completed all the changes to the site, also taking into account the above points, it is worth conducting a repeat SEO audit to be 100% sure that the new site is possibly the best prepared in terms of the SEO strategy adopted. Despite the fact that new sites are usually already designed, taking into account the Google Guidelines for Webmasters, it is better to be sure that nothing significant has been left out of the whole process.

Summary

The process of designing and publishing a new version of a website requires a number of steps to be taken if one wants to maintain as many of the existing organic positions as possible. Many SEO elements should be taken into account and implemented already at the stage of creating a new version of the site, so that there is no need to make a large number of changes to the already finished design. It is also worth thinking carefully about the technology we choose to create our new site so that it is as search engine friendly as possible.

However, the redirection map is a key element that, if overlooked, can have dramatic consequences for visibility and traffic to our site. It must be very high on our list of priorities before launching a new site.