The 7 Basics of Safe Redesign

28 April 2011 Published on Which Web Design Company


7 Essential Basics to set in action to avoid damaging any established ranking on the search engines when redesigning a clients website.
Clients often have old or tired websites that no longer meet their needs and search for a redesign. Designers are often focused on how a site should look and function in their humble opinion and as designers there's little wrong with this.


However, in the ever increasingly competitive world of internet search, designers who pay little to no attention to how a clients existing site is already established with the search engines could seriously damage any existing power that a site has generated through its existance and in turn damage their client's business.


The following 7 points should be the very basics set in place prior to a redesign and relaunch of a client's website.

1. Perform a Page Rank check on the existing site to see how it stands, and a links search to see what sites are linking to the existing site.

2. To ensure that no links are lost make sure the redesign maintains the existing URL's and that the content of the original is reflected in the new.

3. If content &/or pages are to be removed, rather than deleting them 301 redirect them to the nearest relevant page or topic.

4. If a domain name change is essential 301 redirect the old pages to the new on the new domain name until the new site and domain is established on the search engines. Allow 90 days for this to take place assuming the client has SEO support.

5. Try to avoid using techniques that search engines cannot read like Flash unless really neccessary. And if used add no script tags with honest keyword rich descriptions of the content, especially if the content includes text.

6. Consult with the client about their keyword use and utilise H1 & H2 tags as a minimum and reflect in the page title. The clients SEO support can amend if needed but the designer should make sure they are in place from the launch. Untitled pages or incorrectly titled pages on client sites will not help those pages to be found by the search engines and also make the site look ill considered. Not good for the client.

7. Before launch, if the site has been designed and tested on a server for client viewing but no index tags have been set to stop the search engines from indexing until the site is on its own domain, don't forget to strip out the no index tags.

There are many SEO considerations that are essential in this day and age and many designers take the view that it's not their job. Fair enough, a designer is not neccessarily an SEO specialist. But a designer should make sure the foundations are in place for those specialists to enhance.

Everyone wins, the client gets a brilliantly designed new website which has maintained any SEO power generated by the previous. Their SEO specialists have an easier job of not establishing basics and think well of the designers, and if the client launches without SEO support, they're off to a good start with decent basics in place courtesy of the web designers.