Sometimes businesses want to update their old website. However, failure to take into account SEO issues on the updated site leads to loss of position in search engines. Therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to several key issues: You need to know how your SEO situation is right now You should know about the problems that arise during the new design A special plan should be developed and the path should be followed according to that plan Note: read the blog post about Page-in-Page SEO. What problems can arise during the redesign of sites? Problems are common when updating without a system. However, the most critical problems are the following: ⦁ Content may have been deleted, modified, or added to a different location within the site ⦁ URLs and their structure can be changed ⦁ Internal linkage structure can be modified ⦁ Some problems may arise during the introduction of new technology (e.g. React SEO problems) ⦁ New technical problems may have appeared ⦁ Domain may have changed ⦁ The Subdomain may have changed ⦁ HTTP protocol may have changed What should be the goals during the design update of the sites in terms of SEO? There are two main objectives: Maintaining the status in the current ranking Developing the situation in the ranking SEO business plan needed when updating sites # 1 keep the old site online Try, keep the previous version of your site online. What you need to pay attention to here is that the site is tied to research bots (crawla). That is, but you need to configure it so that you yourself see it. With it, you will be able to comfortably compare the differences between the new and old version. # 2 keep crawl data of bots Save crawl data for bots from the previous version. With this you will be able to do URL analyzes. #3 don't change anything that isn't problematic Sometimes edits are made to pages or structural sections that do not need any updates. This happens both within the content and in the URL structure. Try not to make any additional adjustments to anything that is not a problem with the structure, especially the URL structure. #4 set up 301 redirects for the new URL structure View all previous URL structures and compare them with new ones. If the new URL structure is different, redirect previous URLs to new ones with 301 redirect. #5 Save previous content on the new site as well Try to maintain the available content. Try not to make changes to the old content that was relevant at first. Page # 6-optimize internal elements Optimize page title, description, tags, and other elements. # 7 edit backlinks When the URL structure of the site changes, please note that your existing backlinks will not match the new ones. Therefore, write to the sites where there are backlinks and edit them according to the new URL structure. #8 Keep an eye on internal linking So, usually internal linking on the previous site is relevant to old URLs. Updating can affect ranking in search engines. # 9 edit XML sitemap As the URL structure changes XML sitemap, too, do not forget to make the appropriate adjustments. # 10 do ranking monitoring Monitor and monitor the current situation in search engines. If there are any technical problems, quickly execute the appropriate corrections. # 11 do a technical audit of the site After updating stably, periodically conduct a technical audit of the site. #12 use Google Search Console Google Search Consoledan constantly diagnoses the situation and fix the problems. In particular, focus on the following issues: Indexing Sitemap Links etc. Finally, when you want to update your sites, focus on the previous structure. Before updating, make a possible roadmap and try to execute the plans step by step.
