Though everybody is aware of the importance of Search Engine Optimization in current competitive market, people often forget to accord desired attention when they redesign website. People think about Search Engine Optimization only after website revamp is over. One may be coming up with beautiful looking site, with great images. But what matters are whether one answers what the user looks for or gives a solution for the user.
On a marketers perspective the website is the face of business. It should act as a sales person. It should help the business to generate leads or acquire customers. To achieve the website should provide useful information. Users search for information or try to solve their problems. So content plays an important role.
Before thinking about the website one should know
What your personas are searching;
What are the problems they may be facing;
What kind of answers they are looking; and
How can one provide great website experience to visitors
Here are five mistakes one can avoid while redesigning the website.
1st Mistake : Planning about Search Engine Optimization after designing
This is the big mistake most people commit. They will think about Search Engine Optimization only after the website is ready. Best practice will be to define one’s personas, researching on them, finding out possible pain points and defining buyers ‘journey. After defining persona do research on kind of keywords they use and build content on the same. Following this course will help one in increasing user experience and generate more leads.
2nd Mistake : Not using 301 Redirection
301 Redirection is the process of permanent redirect from one URL to another. One has to do this when the site structure is changed or when the URL is restructured. This helps to retain the SEO weightage given by Google to the old site. Same helps with backlinks which acquired for old site. One can retain about 60% of the weightage from old links with proper 301 Redirection.
3rd Mistake : Not having a responsive design
Responsive design is the new buzzword in the town. Currently 60% of the searches happen in Google originate from mobile devices. If the site is not responsive to mobiles and tablets, one may miss huge amount of traffic. If somebody comes to a non-responsive website through mobile device, chances of bouncing back will be high. To get the attention on the visitor one has got only six seconds.
One 21st April Google implemented a new mobile algorithm, which penalizes websites that are not responsive in search results on mobile devices. So if somebody is searching from mobile or tablet device, she is going to have a hard time finding the site.
4th Mistake : Not Tracking Analytics
To measure one’s marketing efforts Google Analytics or similar ones tracking codes should be installed. Analytics will give insight to number of people visiting the site, time spent on the site, pages visited, bounce rate, the path that visitors took and point at which bounced off. So if Analytics is already installed in the old site, one can benchmark how the user experience was before redesign and how new site is attracting and converting visitors to customers. With all this data available one can fix issues easily.
5th Mistake : Using NoIndex Tags
NoIndex tag tells search engines not to crawl the site. Adding NoFollow tag in Robots.txt is a common practice while the site is under construction. No one wants search engines to crawl one’s site and list it when it’s under construction.
But if the search engine is unable to crawl even after the new site is launched, it is not going to show up in search results. So one should make sure that there are no NoIndex tag in Robots.txt once the site design is over.
