New algorithms mean that every website needs to undergo a redesign at some point. With these shifts in consumer Internet use, it can be nearly impossible for an outdated website to produce the results you need. If you’re updating your site recently, you likely showed off all the great changes with increased traffic, conversions, and sales.
Unfortunately, not every website owner can fully benefit from a redesign. In some cases it might actually decrease traffic for the site owner instead of increasing them. If you’re experiencing site growth issues, be sure to read on for 3 possible reasons, as well as what you should do about them.
If you’re looking to redesign your website in the future, here are 5 tips to avoid traffic drops that may happen by doing so.
Our creative marketing campaigns help you engage your audience and improve the metrics that will positively impact your business.
Causes for traffic drops after a redesign
Google doesn’t have to index your new pages after a redesign. In fact, it can take a few days for the change to be visible to your users across their search engine results. If you don’t see any traffic drops over a week or less and the loss is less than 10%, there’s likely no big issue at play. However, if you’re seeing drastic losses in traffic over more than a few days or over more than 10% of your previous traffic, then there may be something preventing Google from being able to index the new pages.
If you’ve found your work is beginning to suffer from a lack of attention, it might be time to examine these three areas.
1. Redirects
There’s nothing more important than proper redirecting and replacing your old content with the new. Search engines and browsers are crucial to the performance of your website, so it’s absolutely essential that you have these in place. Even if you just keep the URL the same, we recommend creating a 301 permanent redirect under each page/URL to tell search engines where the new version is located.
If you’ve recently changed your URL structure, or moved any pages to new locations, but didn’t set up proper redirects, this is likely the main cause of your traffic drop. You can identify these issues in Google’s Search Console by going to Crawl > Crawl Errors and selecting the “Not Found” tab. If there are any pages without redirects on your site, they’ll show up here.
You had a traffic issue, but it was fixed by implementing 301 redirects for your old content. However, if you still continue to experience an issue with the health of your website you should contact our support team.
2. Site structure
We love great redesigns, but if you changed the layout of your website dramatically you’ll need to create a new sitemap. To speed up the process of restoring your traffic levels, use the Search Console sitemap tool to submit your site’s basics. We recommend reviewing your internal links too, since they can impact how Google indexes and understands your site.
Links on your website, especially ones pointing to out-of-date URLs, have been known to cause crawl issues. A variety of links can lead Google to crawl a page multiple times, which will make your rankings significantly worse.
3. Site copy
When it comes to website redesigns, sometimes a completely new copy is needed. The good news is it can sometimes provide opportunities to optimize your rankings. The bad news is that if not done right, modification of existing content can also be detrimental to rankings.
If your site no longer provides the information that people are looking for, Google won’t rank it as highly. We can help you regain control of your web traffic by addressing these issues. We can perform a content audit on your site and optimize your pages for the most important keywords that you want to rank for. If you have a backup of your old site saved somewhere, we’ll be able to determine which keywords will help you thrive again.
The time it takes for your traffic to return to normal levels depends on the severity of the issue.
If your traffic has lessened as a result of one of the above issues, you should take steps to remedy it. Keep in mind that while your traffic may come back quickly, it may take a little while for Google to crawl and index all new pages. In the meantime, your traffic will likely be less than usual until your site is seen in search results again.
How to avoid traffic drops during a redesign
If you haven’t yet redesigned your site, it may be worth revisiting these tips. With the information above, you may think twice about remodeling your site in the near future.
You need to be sure that you’re working with a reputable designer. Because updating your website is a complex process, make sure you’ve prepared for the process. We’ll take the following steps when it comes time to redesign your site.
1. Make SEO part of the process
Do you want to make sure that your redesign is an effective strategy for increasing traffic and revenue? Make sure that your team includes an experienced SEO representative in the process. Their perspective can help you avoid serious issues that result in lost traffic, and suggest changes that will increase your visitors after the redesign.
2. Crawl your existing site and plan your new site architecture
When redesigning or restructuring a website, it’s important to take an inventory of what pages are on your site. There are many free tools and resources online that will help you do this and provide your results in a downloadable spreadsheet. Use that information to make sure everything is covered and avoid repeating any content from the old layout.
If you want your site to be SEO-friendly, you should make sure that each page includes proper URLs with relevant subfolders and appropriate page titles. A redesign is the perfect opportunity to fix this issue.
3. Set up 301 redirects
It’s important to have proper redirects in place as a way of telling search engines that pages on your new website are the same URL as they were previously. Before launching your new website, make sure to set up the correct parameters so Google and other search engines will pick up the change.
Using 302 redirects is not recommended. They can harm your rankings and overall site performance.
4. Create a new sitemap
Site overviews, like a sitemap, are an important part of website design. Before launching your site, make sure to create one. Keep in mind that you should only include around 100 pages – so if your site is wide-ranging and extensive, you may not need a full sitemap.
5. Make sure your analytics tracking code is in place
Now that your website is ready for launch, it’s a good idea to double-check on the analytics tracking code. Although this may seem like an obvious step, many new businesses overlook placing the code in their header or footer. Make sure to check before launching and you can avoid any issues.
