Why SEO Traffic and Rankings Drop After a Web…

Many companies have redesigned their websites in the last few years as the importance of having a strong online presence has grown, and SEO agencies have also improved their approach and strategy to website page content and structure. As the internet has grown in importance, so has the need for a well-designed and easy-to-use website in order to stay one step ahead of the competition.

A new website may greatly boost your overall traffic and leads assisted by SEO services in Australia, but the transition from old to new is not always as simple as most companies anticipate.

Have you seen a decrease in traffic after launching a new version of your website?

Sadly, this is a problem that many companies face. There is likely a straightforward cause for your traffic drop, and if handled within the first few months, your former traffic levels may be readily regained if the problem is solved. Learn more about how to measure your SEO agency performance.

Proper redirection of traffic from the old website URLs to the appropriate URLs on your new site is critical when rebuilding a website. This is what many businesses don’t take into consideration, and most usually sideline the inputs of SEO agencies in the process of redesigning or revamping a website.

As if you were changing your postal address, redirecting is just informing Google that all of the traffic previously sent to one URL should now be directed to the new URL.

Is There Anything I Can Do If I’ve been properly Redirected to My Site?

1. In order to make sure that Google is correctly indexing your website, you should do an audit using Google Search Console, or consult an SEO company for help with the audit, to know where the issue is. For example, you may use Google Search Console to analyze your site for issues such as:
   • Broken links
   • Found errors
   • Issues with indexing

If your site is experiencing problems or is at risk of being infected by malware, here is where you’ll discover information from Google.

1. Make an appointment with your SEO agency if you’re still unclear about what’s going on. When trying to track down the origins of a problem, it helps to have a thorough awareness of the most recent site updates.
2. If you can’t figure out what’s causing your site’s traffic to plummet, it’s time to call in a professional SEO specialist.

The Importance of Redirecting

Even though the design of your existing website is antiquated, there may be a few aspects that work in your favor in terms of increasing your search traffic. It’s important to keep these good aspects in mind while designing a new website. These are a few examples:

• Google search ranks 
• Inbound links
• Your website’s age is a factor.

Don’t lose this equity in the changeover of your website, therefore make sure to notify Google of the new sites when possible.

The launch of the new site should go well if redirecting is done appropriately. 301 redirects are one of the best practices for SEO, but there are various methods to redirect traffic.

Why Is It Relevant Which URL You Redirect Your Page?

Alternatively, would a simple redirect to your new home page suffice? Unfortunately, the situation is more nuanced. To put it another way, redirecting all of your previous URLs to the homepage is not a good idea. As an illustration: Google’s goal is to offer its users the greatest possible experience, therefore it ranks websites depending on how useful they are to those users’ search terms. Redirecting URLs to the new link with comparable content rather than sending people to the homepage to search is one technique to guarantee that you will continue to offer consumers the most relevant information in search results.

Your new site may not include pages that precisely match the pages on your previous site in certain circumstances. In this scenario, you should apply your own judgment and divert the traffic to the link that you believe would be most beneficial to the visitor. When it comes to redirects, even a page with fewer links to other pages is preferable to the homepage.

Making Use of Redirects Can Be Beneficial to Your New Website’s Health

If you have hundreds or even thousands of pages indexed by Google, the work of redirecting your URLs may seem overwhelming. However, you’ll reap the rewards of gaining:

1. In the near term, regaining lost traffic from search engines may have a substantial impact on performance.
2. Recovering lost equity in order to increase your long-term SEO efforts.

After a Website Redesign, Here Are 5 Things to Check.

After launching your new website, you’ll want to maintain a post-launch checklist available. Perhaps you’ve just established a new website and are trying to make sure you’ve covered all of your bases.

Check out a top SEO agency advice to finish your website!

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)

You should contact your hosting provider or the IT support of your content management system to receive an SSL certificate if you’ve changed hosting providers or are working with a new content management system. Google and other search engines will see this as a sign that your site is safe and secure, which will benefit you in the rankings.

Indexing

You probably had your staging site (also known as a dev site) set up to index your website while it was being developed. If this is the case, ensure to update your website’s settings so that Google and other search engines can now index your website and include you in search results!

Sitemaps

Be sure to re-submit your sitemap to Google and other search engines once you’ve re-indexed your website so they can see your new pages. Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools allow you to do this if you’re using WordPress.

Extensions, Add-ons, and Plugins!

In order to generate things like PPC landing pages, metadata, redirects, and more; many systems, such as WordPress and Shopify, rely heavily on third-party plugins. That’s why it’s important to have everything in place before launching a new website, so you don’t have any downtime.

Interlinks

Hovering over links on your live site may still take you to the development site’s URL if you used interlinking on the pages of your staging site. Consult your web developer or SEO agency to install a search and replace plugin on the site to allow it to effortlessly switch out all of the URLs to the live domain.

Final Thoughts

After redesigning a website, it is a common practice of SEO companies for large corporations to perform a site audit to discover any potential problem and tie loose ends. If you have just successfully redesigned your website, consult with a top SEO agency or professional SEO specialist in your locality to conduct a site audit to make sure you’re properly in tune with Google’s demands.