If you’re running a small business, the most effective marketing tool is your website, so you must take advantage of this, as it’s the first thing your customers will see. It can also be a strong mechanism via which to acquire customers through search engines, social networks, etc.
Regardless of size, it’s best to always upgrade your website and its design. Most standard companies redesign their website every eighteen months. The process is so lengthy, that immediately after the project is finished, work starts on the next one.
However, if you end up redesigning, you’ll also want to ensure your rankings don’t suffer, but rather increase. If you lose rankings, it doesn’t matter how good the design is, because it isn’t converted.
SEO Tips for Redesigning your Website
These SEO tips for redesigning a website can be used to increase the rankings of search engines to implement a new site design or use a new web platform.
Before selecting a new website design, you should consider the platform on which you’re located. Also, have an open mind when it comes to platforms. In my professional opinion, WordPress is the best platform for SEO. However, still adhere to due diligence when choosing a platform.
If you’re using a SEO Sydney company to help redesign your website, ask for their thoughts with regards the best platform. If doing it yourself, look at several review websites and try to determine which platform will best meet your needs.
If you want the best SEO, then I recommend WordPress. Incidentally, it’s not a big surprise to find that most SEO companies use WordPress.
Competition Analysis
Whether you’re creating the website yourself or using another company to assist, make sure there is a competitive analysis; do not just look at the companies you think are in direct competition with your business. Instead, consider the businesses that you are competing against for the search engine ‘gold’. This can be done using SEMRush – a tool that shows how competitors rank.
Using this data, it’s possible to observe the competitors and understand how they are classified. Once armed with this information, you can use it for the new website design and create a similar structure or employ certain tactics to gain an advantage.
Obviously, every situation is different, but the main goal is to analyse competitors and develop a strategy to overcome them with your new website.
Site Architecture
Ensure you have a rock-solid site architecture that guarantees a decent position for search engine rankings. You can achieve this understanding your main key phrases and directing them to the main web pages in the navigation bar.
This is because Google likes back-linked pages. If you link the pages in the navigation bar, share the backlink authority of the home page (which has most of its backlinks), then hopefully you’ll enjoy a higher ranking on Google.
Create a Landing Page
As mentioned earlier, you’ll need a solid site architecture, including landing pages. You’ll also want your initial pages to be optimised for SEO. There are more than 200 factors in Google and thousands of items to consult with regards page optimisation.
Instead of reviewing all these elements, you need to make sure the following are adhered to:
- Key phrase entered and meta-title completed
- Key phrase entered and meta-description completed.
- Key phrase in the header label (h1 or h2)
- Key phrase in the first 100 or more words
- Short sentence of 2-3 keywords in the URL; that is, example.com/example-content
If you implement these pointers, you should succeed.
Site Improvements
If you decide to move websites, you’ll obviously want to improve the following elements, because they are what Google considers when judging a website based on its authority. Therefore, be sure to use this as a checklist to make sure you improve your SEO when you move.
Site Speed: This is fairly standard. You’ll want to make sure your site’s speed allows for a good Google Page Speed rating. Otherwise, you must work with your developer / designer to make the necessary changes to improve site speed. If you’re using WordPress, there are several add-ons to improve your speed. A lot of reliable hosting providers can do the trick here.
Content Writing: Google can detect badly written content and penalise you for this. If you search on Google, access a website and then start immediately, Google will penalise your site for that search. So, to sum up, you need well-written, professional content to score high marks on Google. Use a professional copywriting service to create excellent content that your customer base wants to read and to which they can relate.
Correct Encoding: This is more for companies with websites based on the likes of Ruby on Rails. You want to make sure your header tags are in H1 format and that you only have one per page. Also ensure you have a meta-title and description for each page.
Site Structure: It’s quite simple; if you use WordPress instance, you can continue as long as you select persistent keyword-rich links. Here are some examples of how you can structure your URL.
Mobile Optimisation: Finally, you need to make sure your new site is mobile-friendly and has no interstitials, which could hurt you. Make sure you don’t hide content on your mobile device, due to the first mobile index.
Start a Blog Program
Finally, after the launch, be sure to start a blog timeline. Creating long-lasting content on your blog is a strategy that is very effective, particularly for small and local businesses. Blogging often doesn’t work for small businesses, because they do it incorrectly. Therefore, build a blog of 1000 full words and answer any customer questions or solve problems. This will capture them in the research phase and you’ll therefore have a better chance of converting them into customers during the purchase phase.
Conclusion
There are thousands of ways to optimise your website for search engines, but these strategies are foolproof methods for implementing best practices in an easy and effective way. So, if you’re redecorating your website or thinking about it, I suggest you follow these guidelines to succeed.
