When you’re launching a new site or redesigning your current website. It’s easy to get excited about the latest design trends as well as the visual aspects that make up the redesign. You’ve spent months planning , developing, and tweaking your site. Now, you’re finally ready to go live with it. But before you hit publish, there is one more thing you can do to ensure your new site has SEO value…
…update your existing site using 301 redirects.
Launching a new site is always a bit of a scramble.
There are so many things to do, and not much time to do them in. If you’re lucky, you have time to plan ahead, but sometimes that’s just not the case.
Here are some tips for what to do when you have limited time available to launch your site:
Get your development team involved early. If you’re launching a new product or service, it’s critical that you have people on hand who can help develop or design your site. That might seem obvious, but it’s surprising how many companies skimp on the budget for this part of the process, and then have to scramble at the last minute due to lack of resources.
Building the development team early gives them time to get familiar with your product and come up with an effective solution for its website. It also gives them time to make suggestions and recommendations about how your site should be designed and laid out. Once you are aware of their suggestions, it can be easier to make changes to your plans based on their input.
Gather content early involve a copywriter and editor if required at an early stage of the project. If you’re planning on having lots of copy on your site. Information pages explaining how your product works, what makes it special and who it’s aimed at are key to getting the right message across.
What happens when you launch your new site?
Launching a new website is one of the most exciting things that can happen to you as a business owner. You have worked hard for months or even years on that site, and you are finally ready to see it in action.
The launch itself can be very hectic, but it’s also very important. It’s the first impression of your brand, product or service that you give to your visitors. If you don’t make the right impression, the customer may never come back.
Website redesigns have a big impact on search results, but not just because of changes to the code. Changes to your site’s look and feel also change the user experience, which can have a direct impact on traffic and other SEO factors. To ensure that your new site launch has as little negative impact as possible on your rankings, here are some best practices:
Inform users about changes. If you’re changing the look and feel of your site, include a message on your homepage letting users know what’s going on. The message should appear as soon as they arrive.
Reorganise pages. If you’re combining or reorganising pages, make sure search engines know about it by using 301 redirects. Google will have indexed your old website and structure, so and will remember that for a while.
Redirects tell Google that a page has moved to a new address, redirecting those old links and search results to point to the new valid information.
301 Redirects – What They Are and Why You Need Them
As far as SEO is concerned, they’re essential for anyone making any kind of change to their site – whether it’s a content update, a change in URL structure, or a site redesign.
When done properly, they’re completely invisible to the end-user – but they’re vital for ensuring that your site continues to rank well in search engines.
The idea behind this type of redirect is to send any and all traffic coming from a specific page, post, category or other kind of web content to another page. For example, if you were to change your URL structure and move all your blog posts to a different directory, the 301 redirect would ensure that any visitor who tried to access the old blog URL would be automatically directed to the new directory. That way you can keep all your old SEO juice flowing to the new directory without losing any visitors.
How do I setup 301 redirects?
Setting up 301 redirects for your website can be done manually, but if you run an off the shelf system such as WordPress there are many plugins available to help you.
If you are using Apache server software you simply need to edit the .htaccess file and add the following code for individual pages.
Redirect 301 /oldpage1 /newpage1.html
Redirect 301 /oldpage2 /newpage2.html
The examples above used to point to folders on the website while the new path to the page is now a .html file.
If you require assistance with your redirects or a website redesign please Contact Us.