SEO Considerations for Website Re-Development

The re-development of a website is a great opportunity to enhance user experience, improve conversion rates and build on your performance within search engines.

Get your 'SEO' involved early in the process and they will be able to support with the planning, design, development and re-launch of the website. Here are some key SEO considerations for planning and re-launching your website.

1. Set out your Key Performance Indicators KPI's before you begin planning so you can work towards them. Take a benchmark of your current exposure so you can report on improvements in the KPI's after launch.

2. Take advantage of your understanding of your target market, develop persona's and plan journeys through the website. This is an opportunity to engage your users with new design features and content.

3. A website re-development provides a unique opportunity to optimise your conversion rate by reviewing and testing the purchase process, product pages and forms before relaunching the site.

4. This is also a prime opportunity to implement SEO elements like optimised URL's and to make site structure enhancements, address content gaps and update navigation to support your search marketing strategy.

After the website has been planned, scoped, designed and built comes the important business of re-launching the site. I've seen a lot of website re-launches, and as a result I've seen a lot of issues that could have been avoided by involving an SEO in the process.

1. If you have had the opportunity to implement keyword rich URL's as part of the re-development or if the URL structure changes ensure that all pages are properly re-directed to the corresponding page of the new site. Don't lose the value from established pages that have gained trust, links and rankings over time.. 301.

2. Make sure that Analytics code is implemented correctly across every page and that goals, actions and the funnel will track users and report on performance.

3. Implement a sitemap.xml, it will help search engines to discover the new structure and pages. Added bonus you can double check webmaster tools post launch to ensure there are no issues.

4. It sounds obvious but check your robots.txt file to ensure that it isn't blocking anything that it shouldn't be blocking.

5. Develop a custom 404 page to make sure that users can navigate back to your homepage or relevant section.

Every web project is unique and as a result requires a bespoke strategy for optimising the website.

The best advice I can give for a website re-development is to involve your 'SEO' early in the process, they will work with you to plan and implement SEO elements to improve your search engine exposure and can help you avoid costly mistakes.