How to Plan for Success with Website Design & SEO

SEO is a way of making your website more attractive to search engines, which should bring more traffic to your site. Said another way, SEO is the bait of the Internet. Without it, it’s possible to catch a fish but you’re going to be there a very long time waiting.

If you’re considering a website redesign, SEO is extremely important. Many people think creating a shiny new site is bait enough but this is the difference between fishing with a balled-up piece of white bread and live bait. If you want to attract anything of substance, you need to leave the bread at home and optimize your new website.

Need help building backlinks? Check out 7 Ways to Build Credible SEO Backlinks.

Why Optimize Your Website as Part of a Redesign?

First, search engine optimization isn’t something you flip on.  You can’t redesign your site and then tell your designers and developers that you want it “optimized.” It’s not a clear coat. You can’t just apply it. Instead, you want to begin your redesign with SEO in mind. SEO is a part of and gets factored into the:

• Design structure/layout
• Coding
• Content

Those are pretty important areas.

Imagine getting to the end of your redesign and wanting to “SEO” it. Those areas are so critical, you would need to begin again. That’s probably not in your manager’s vocabulary.

If you don’t incorporate SEO in your website redesign, you run the risk of a tragic drop in traffic on your site. Less traffic means fewer sales. This is definitely not in your manager’s vocabulary.

When you redesign your site, you (potentially) have a lot to lose like when Coca-Cola introduced New Coke. Don’t run the risk of alienating your customers and destroying your web traffic. It’s a lot harder to come back from a catastrophic dip than it is to merely hold on to an impressive spot.

How Do You Incorporate SEO into a Site Redesign?

Draw a line in the sand. See where you are before you start charting where you’re going. Analyze your current content. Decide what’s missing. Make a plan for filling in those gaps.

Create a website structure of pages. What pages are changing? Create a chart that will map your 301 redirects so everyone from design to development to marketing is all on the same page.

Perform an inbound link analysis. There are a lot of other components involved. A site redesign has a big effect on your SEO. Learn more about what you need to do with our Website Redesign Checklist.

In search of the best SEO tools to use for your website? Here are 5 Awesome (and Free!) SEO Tools to consider.

Be Smart, Plan for Success

SEO doesn’t happen on its own. It’s a very strategic undertaking. Good content may happen easily if you know what your customer needs and is interested in, but the behind-the-scenes work in optimizing your website and content is a learned activity and something that must be mastered. Things change often with SEO and you want to work with someone who stays on top of those changes.