Has your website started to look a bit boring or outdated? Or perhaps you need to fine-tune it to make it more appealing to the visitor. Has the thought of messing up your hard-earned SEO rankings made you stop in your tracks? Well, your concern has a point.
Your audience's tastes vary over time, and the longer you wait to revamp your site, the more obsolete it will appear. On top of that, contemporary design strategies frequently enhance the functionality and user experience of your site. Redesigning your website not only makes it look more trendy and appealing, but it also makes your visitors happy. And more happy visitors equals more leads.
Now that we've got the reasons to redesign, let's look at making sure your SEO rankings are protected. Here is your 5-step website SEO redesign checklist that our experts have compiled to keep your SEO rankings intact.
It's always a good idea to make a backup of your present website before starting a site redesign as a precaution. Your theme files, plugins, and, database should all be backed up. That way, if things go wrong, you can go back to the prior version of the website.
Since the Craft CMS tool is commonly used to develop websites, we recommend you install Enupal. Enupal is the plugin to use if you want to back up your site for $49. It is the most popular and reliable scheduled backup plugin if you have built a website using Craft CMS.
When visitors come to your website, you don't want them to encounter a broken page or broken links. We strongly recommend you enable maintenance mode for as long as you need to make the necessary modifications to your page's content.
You can also start from scratch, build your pages without any code by using the ready-made page parts and page blocks. These sections and blocks even have their own templates, so you won't need to be a design pro to make things seem professional. Plus, by including option forms, prizes, or contact forms on your maintenance page, you can expand your email list while rebuilding your site. Win-win, if you ask us!
In fact, here are a few ideas that we found on dribble.com for a website under construction:
After setting up your maintenance page, collect your website's SEO data before making any changes to the design. This helps in comparing the performance of your site after you've made your adjustments. Here's how you do it:
However, if you want to change the structure of some of your pages or the URLs, follow the instructions below:
Hope that helps!
You'll need to undertake an on-page examination of your content now that your design adjustments are in place. If you need assistance with optimization, check out this comprehensive SEO guide for beginners.
While designing your website, try to keep the title, headers, meta-descriptions, and content body the same. You should also create a spreadsheet to aid in comparing the changes that occurred during the redesigning process.
This is a critical next step! Make sure to read this one carefully.
Whenever you're building or rebuilding a website, you should do it on a staging server. This is usually done so that you may audit and test your website's functionality. If any issues are discovered, they can be readily corrected before your site goes live.
Now it's time to put everything you've worked so hard for to the test.
Remove your new site from the staging environment and publish it to the live server. Disable "site in maintenance mode" and inform your visitors of the new look. They might be able to assist you by reporting any bugs that arise.
Even when you launch your website, your work is far from done. You must still audit the following processes:
The auditing procedure is now complete. And with that, you've completed the entire Website backup procedure.
We hope that our information has helped you in making the process of website design and SEO maintenance go more smoothly. This step-by-step instruction will also show you how to market your website before it goes live.
If you found the above process quite challenging, feel free to contact us. We are one of the leading names in SEO Marketing in Hong Kong. Let our experts help you with services such as Website development and SEO management.
Tiffany is a Biochemistry graduate from CUHK. After graduation, she worked as a Digital & Analytics intern at L'Oréal APAC for more than a year before joining Butter as part of the Graduate Programme. Tiffany now works closely with the Strategy and Business Development Team to meet output expectations and contributes to managing client projects within Butter.
