Every company at some point will decide to re-design their website. Most of the time, their reasons will be to project a new look, more modern or in line with a certain image or branding. Or they need to change or edit the content because it has become out-dated. But often, a web design company will hear a business say they would like to change their website to make it more SEO or user friendly.
SEO and user-friendly experiences are closely related, despite what many businesses think. After all, search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing will rank a site based on the quality of the website, and that includes how easy it is for a user to do what they need to do. Fortunately, there are some mistakes a business or the web design company it has hired can avoid when re-designing a website.
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Keywords: It is important to know your target keywords when you are re-designing a website and there are many great tools out there for this (AdWords, Wordtracker, etc.) Your website design company may be able to assist you in selecting your target keyword phrases.
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Competition: Now that you know which keywords are important to your website, it’s time to check out your competition. You might want to perform your own Google search for your keywords and see which websites come up in the top ten. If you are a small shoe company in a small town, you probably aren’t going to be able to compete with the big brands that take up the top spot when you search for a broad term such as “shoes.” It may be more realistic to go after a less competitive keyword phrase like “Toronto Shoe store” which will likely bring you more targeted traffic.
Architecture: Your website needs to look nice and be search engine friendly at the same time. The way you integrate these two important factors with one another is crucial.
- Review: Before you or your website design company makes any major changes to your website, carefully analyze what your website has already been doing well. If a certain part of your website is already ranking or converting well and you are about to completely re-design it altogether, you may want to re-consider.
- URLs: If at all possible, do not change your URL, even just a little. If you have to, make sure you redirect the old pages to the new pages.
One more thing to remember involves your staging website if you have one. Often, a website design company will create a staging version of your website, sort of like a rough draft. This needs to be protected by requiring a password to view it. If a search engine picks up on your staging site, it can end up being a part of the cyber world and you do not want this mistake to happen. It can be a huge headache for a business owner and it is really difficult to correct.
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