Planning a Business Website Redesign Without Losing Traffic

Redesigning your business website can significantly improve its performance, user experience, and overall appeal. However, a redesign that isn’t carefully planned can result in lost traffic, poor user experience, and even decreased conversions. Planning a website redesign with SEO and user retention in mind is essential to ensure you don’t lose the valuable traffic you’ve worked hard to acquire. In this article, we’ll discuss how to plan a website redesign while maintaining or even boosting your traffic. And how Advertising Solutions can help you through this process for a smooth transition.

Set Clear Goals for the Redesign

Before diving into the redesign process, it’s essential to define what you hope to achieve. Ask yourself what aspects of your website need improvement and what goals you want to accomplish.

  • Better User Experience: Are you redesigning to improve navigation, site speed, or mobile optimization?
  • Increase Conversions: Are you looking to make your CTAs more compelling or streamline your checkout process to increase sales or lead generation?
  • Improved SEO Performance: Are you aiming to boost search engine rankings by optimizing on-page SEO elements, such as titles, meta descriptions, or internal linking?
  • Branding Update: Are you refreshing your branding, like color schemes, fonts, and imagery, to align with your current business direction?

Advertising Solutions can work with you to define your goals, ensuring the redesign aligns with your objectives and minimizes any disruption to your existing traffic.

Conduct a Thorough SEO Audit

To avoid losing traffic during your website redesign, it’s crucial to conduct a comprehensive SEO audit of your current website. This audit will help identify the key factors that are driving traffic, which you can preserve during the redesign.

  • Identify Top-Performing Pages: Pinpoint the pages that generate the most organic traffic and conversions. These pages should be a priority to maintain their SEO value after the redesign.
  • Analyze Keywords: Review the keywords that are driving traffic to your site. Ensure that these are incorporated into your new design and content strategy.
  • Backlink Analysis: Understand the backlinks pointing to your website. You need to make sure these links remain functional after the redesign, either by redirecting URLs or keeping the same structure.
  • Page Load Speed: A website redesign can impact page speed, which affects both user experience and SEO. Make sure that the redesign will maintain or improve load times.

At Advertising Solutions, we specialize in SEO audits and ensure that the key SEO elements are carried over into your new design, so your rankings don’t suffer.

Keep URL Structure Consistent

Changing your website’s URL structure during a redesign can lead to broken links and loss of traffic from search engines. If your URLs are changing, set up proper redirects to ensure that users and search engines are automatically redirected to the new pages.

  • 301 Redirects: These permanent redirects tell search engines that a page has been moved to a new location. Ensure that all old URLs point to the correct new pages.
  • Preserve Category and Folder Structure: Try to keep your existing URL structure as consistent as possible. If you do make changes, ensure you update all internal links and set up redirects for any page that changes.

Advertising Solutions can help you preserve your URL structure during the redesign, ensuring that any changes are handled with redirects to maintain SEO value.

Maintain Key On-Page SEO Elements

SEO is built on several on-page elements, and during a redesign, it’s crucial to maintain or improve these elements. Some of the most important factors include:

  • Title Tags and Meta Descriptions: These are critical for SEO and user engagement. Be sure to carry over these elements from the old website, or update them to be more optimized for the new content.
  • Header Tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.): Use header tags to structure your content logically. Ensure your new site uses proper heading hierarchy for SEO.
  • Image Alt Text: Properly optimizing images with alt text ensures that search engines can index them and also helps with accessibility.
  • Internal Linking: Link to other important pages within your website to keep users engaged and improve SEO.

At Advertising Solutions, we’ll ensure that all on-page SEO elements are properly managed during your redesign, maintaining your site’s rankings and ensuring optimal performance.

Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly

With the rise of mobile internet usage, ensuring that your website is mobile-friendly is a must. Search engines like Google prioritize mobile-friendly sites, and a poor mobile experience can lead to a drop in rankings and traffic.

  • Responsive Design: Implement a design that automatically adjusts to fit different screen sizes and devices.
  • Mobile Load Speed: Optimize your website’s load time on mobile to keep bounce rates low and user experience high.
  • Mobile Navigation: Ensure that your mobile site is easy to navigate, with easy-to-click buttons, readable text, and fast-loading images.

Advertising Solutions can help you create a mobile-optimized website that performs well across all devices, ensuring you don’t lose traffic from mobile users during your redesign.

Test and Monitor During the Redesign

During the redesign process, continuous testing is essential. Running tests on your new design before it goes live allows you to catch any issues that may harm your website’s SEO or user experience.

  • User Testing: Conduct usability testing with real users to identify any issues with navigation, speed, or mobile responsiveness.
  • SEO Testing: Test how the site performs in terms of load speed, SEO compliance, and internal linking.
  • Pre-Launch Check: Before going live with the redesigned website, run a full audit to ensure that all pages are functioning properly and that SEO elements are intact.

Advertising Solutions offers testing services to ensure your new site meets SEO and usability standards, so you won’t lose any traffic after the launch.

Communicate with Your Audience

If the redesign involves significant changes, it’s essential to communicate with your audience beforehand. Let your customers know when the redesign is coming and how it will improve their experience.

  • Pre-Launch Notification: Consider sending an email newsletter or posting on social media to inform your customers about the upcoming changes.
  • Post-Launch Announcement: After the launch, announce the redesign and highlight new features, such as improved navigation or mobile compatibility.

Advertising Solutions can assist with creating a communication plan to inform your customers about the redesign and its benefits, keeping them engaged during the transition.

Why Choose Advertising Solutions for Your Website Redesign?

A website redesign is a complex process, but with the right strategy, you can improve your site’s performance without losing traffic. At Advertising Solutions, we specialize in website redesigns that focus on preserving your SEO value, enhancing user experience, and improving overall functionality.

  • SEO Expertise: We ensure that your redesign is SEO-friendly and that your current traffic is retained.
  • Responsive Design: We create mobile-friendly websites that perform well on all devices.
  • Conversion Optimization: We focus on redesigning your site to improve lead generation and sales conversions.

Ready to redesign your website without losing traffic? Contact Advertising Solutions today to get started on a strategic redesign that boosts your online presence.