How to Avoid Losing Search Engine Rankings During a Website Refresh

One key to a thriving business is an engaging website that inspires customer conversions. A well-designed B2B-friendly site is particularly beneficial to drive growth in manufacturing. However, creating a good website isn’t just a one-and-done deal. Over time, sites can go stale and require a redesign to keep engagement levels high. 

The challenge when redesigning is ensuring you don’t lose your rankings. Even if you currently have strong SEO with high search engine rankings, a redesign can throw those numbers off if you aren’t careful. Plus, your customers are familiar with your site, so you also want to be mindful of retaining a quality experience for loyal users.  

To avoid plummeting SEO rankings, use this blog as a guide. You’ll learn everything you need to preserve your search engine rankings during a redesign and keep your users happy. 

Step 1: Make Sure Your Existing Site Truly Ranks

iStock-1474751544First, you’ll want to conduct an audit of your current site to get an idea of where it stands and if it’s ranking the way you assume it is. 

Using analytics tools, you’ll want to check your rankings for important keywords. It’s also a good idea to analyze key performance indicators (KPIs) such as number of unique visitors, time spent on site, bounce rate, and domain authority. 

This is also the time to check for any existing SEO issues that could be hindering your performance, including: 

  • Missing, duplicate, or multiple H1 tags
  • Missing and duplicate meta descriptions
  • Duplicate and missing page titles
  • Titles over 512 pixels or under 200 pixels
  • Broken links

If you find that your current site isn’t performing as well as you thought, take the time to make any necessary changes, such as optimizing the content you plan to keep. You don’t want to carry over any existing problems when you redesign. 

While working through your current site, it’s also helpful to start considering new ranking strategies. You can use those ideas to then boost performance when you redesign your site. 

Step 2: Handle Redirects Properly

As you start to remove content or move content to new pages, it’s important to keep in mind that your old pages still hold value. This is because Google may remember links to your old pages for months or even years, and will still direct people to those pages. As such, a good rule of thumb is to avoid deleting old pages entirely for a minimum of six months. 

If you do want to delete old pages, you can redirect them in the meantime to get site visitors to the right place. For example, you can redirect old blog post links that are no longer relevant or that are going to be deleted to your main blog post page.

You should also set up redirects if you change your URL structure or change pages to a new location. For example, going from yourwebsite.com/oldpath/ to yourwebsite2.com/newpath/. 

Again, redirects are important as they ensure site visitors don’t end up on old or deleted pages and instead are directed to new or existing pages on your redesigned site. 

Both Google and Hubspot have useful information and tools to help to manage redirects. It’s also helpful to create a spreadsheet to map out all of your existing pages and links and the new pages and links where you plan to redirect them. 

Step 3: Implement 301 Redirects for Permanent Changes

When you're moving pages or changing URLs during your redesign, it's crucial to use 301 redirects. These are permanent redirects that tell search engines and users that a page has moved permanently to a new location.

301 redirects are essential for maintaining your SEO rankings because they transfer most of the link equity (ranking power) from the old URL to the new one. This means you won't lose the authority you've built up over time with search engines.

Here are some key points to remember when implementing 301 redirects:

  • Use 301 redirects for any pages that have permanently changed location
  • Avoid using 302 redirects (temporary redirects) unless the change is truly temporary
  • Redirect old pages to the most relevant new pages, not just to your homepage
  • Keep your redirect chain as short as possible – ideally, use a direct redirect from the old URL to the new one
  • Test your redirects thoroughly to ensure they're working correctly

By properly implementing 301 redirects, you're helping search engines understand the new structure of your site and ensuring that users are seamlessly directed to the right content. This preserves your hard-earned SEO value and maintains a positive user experience during and after your website redesign.

Next Level SEO 

Like your website, SEO is never a one-time thing. As trends change, it’s important to adapt your SEO strategy accordingly — and a website redesign is a great time to evaluate your current SEO and give it an update. 

At Digital Marketing Direction, we know SEO like the back of our hands. Our innovative marketing approach aims to help manufacturing companies maximize their SEO and drive measurable results. 

If you are planning to redesign your website, we’re here to help! Download The Ultimate Guide to Redesigning Your Manufacturing Company's Website today to get started.  

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Posted by Jackie Connors

Jackie Connors

Jackie Connors is the Founder & CEO of Digital Marketing Direction, a HubSpot Solutions Partner agency based in Texas. She provides inbound training, consulting, and content marketing services to mid-market companies.

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