Every business owner or marketing manager has been through the process of a website redesign and launch. For many businesses, the website is one of their most valuable marketing assets. But it becomes far more valuable when it actively supports business growth rather than simply existing as somewhere customers can look you up.
There are several reasons why organisations decide to re-do their website.
- Brand refresh
- Website speed
- Looking out of date
- Improving user experience
- Company refocus with new products and services
The person managing the website relaunch is so focused on getting the website right and launched that search engine optimisation (SEO) is often an afterthought.
Whether you are spending £5,000 or £25,000 on your new website, if you don’t think about SEO from day 1, no-one will see your new skillfully designed new website.
One of the most common misconceptions in digital marketing is that launching a website automatically means appearing prominently in Google.
But all too often we receive enquiries, stating that a new website has been launched and either it can’t be found in the search engines or traffic has dropped significantly since launch.
When Should SEO Become Part Of Your Website Relaunch Process?
- Existing Strong Performing Content
Before deciding on the new site structure for your new website look at your current website analytics in Google Analytics. Look at the Landing Page report and filter by Organic traffic and see which are your top pages. Those which are performing well either by generating leads or sale or receiving a high number of users.
You should also take a look and see if there are any other pages which are receiving traffic from other sources. These pages should also be replicated in the new site and if possible, keep the URL the same. If there are low-performing content, then this is a good time to clean up or remove low-performing pages. - Keyword Research
Are there any new industry terms or products which the new site will need to cover. Have how people look for you changed? For example, in the world of SEO, we have new terms around AI SEO like GEO and AEO, and we need to make sure these keyword terms are included. Try our free keyword tool which will give you an idea of the estimated monthly Google search volume for keywords. - Existing Onsite Optimisation
We would also recommend taking an inventory of all the existing URLs including all the title tags and meta descriptions from across the site. This document should be kept as a master document so can be referred to post launch to check the URL structure and the original title tags and meta descriptions. This will help to ensure consistency.
The more planning which can take place before launch day, the better. As soon as the new site is live, the search engines bots will visit the site and see the wrong content or not be able to access the website at all. This will resulting in your business loosing visibility in search engine results and AI tools like ChatGPT.
Why Is My New Website Not Ranking In Google?
There are several reasons and often there is a simple fix to resolve these issues. Previously we have seen:
- Noindex tag on the site – this tells the search engines to not index the website so effectively telling the search engines to ignore the website.
- Page URLs have changed – this is fine if it is managed in the correct way. 301 redirects can be set up at the point of launch to tell the search engines that the page has moved. Not only will this redirect the search engine to the new page but this will also pass on any inbound link strength from third party websites.
- Key pages which were performing well in the search engines not being replicated on the new website.
- Previous website optimisation not carried over to new website. The number of new websites launched with the home title tag showing as ‘HOME – {Company Name}.
What Other Website Launch Issues Should You Look Out For?
Other practical issues we have seen as part of a website launch include:
- The contact forms haven’t been updated to the right person’s mailbox and are being sent to the developers or just vanishing into a mailbox elsewhere.
- The email address and phone number on the website haven’t had the html code added so are just text on the screen and not clickable from a mobile. This can stop you receiving calls and emails from website visitors trying to contact you.
- How many times have we seen Latin text place holder text on a site or stock images with watermarks. Not breaking the site but could deter people from getting in contact.
- If there is a rebrand, then sometimes a new domain is required. If there are no 301 redirects from the previous site to the new domain then the search engines will see the new domain as a new site. Effectively a new site with no search engine history and no rankings!
- Where there is an old domain or if a staging site is on a different domain and both sites remain live when the new site is launched, this can cause duplicate content issues. Customers may end up confused, looking at out of date website content or a site which doesn’t have full functionality like contact forms not working.
Making Sure Your Website Isn’t Just An Online Brochure
A strong website should:
- help people discover you,
- understand what makes you different,
- trust your business,
- and take the next step to do business with you
This requires more than design, it requires visibility. In the end, a beautiful designed website nobody can find is still a website nobody can use.
Your website is the destination. Your marketing and search visibility is the way people find their way there. Businesses that invest in both give themselves a much better chance of turning their online presence into real enquiries, customers and revenue.
If you are thinking about or going through a website redesign and need some SEO help then please do not hesitate to get in touch. We offer ongoing SEO packages as well as hourly SEO Training if you are overseeing this process yourself.
