As technology advances and user preferences change, upgrading business websites is key to staying competitive in today’s digital landscape. A redesign not only improves the look and functionality of a website, but makes it easy to navigate for a better user experience, especially on devices like mobile phones. These changes ultimately increase converting visitors into customers and boost revenue.
However, these improvements can sometimes lead to unexpected drops in search engine rankings. That’s because drastic changes without proper SEO considerations disrupt the signals that search engines rely on. By understanding how your new website can ruin your SEO, you can prevent unintentional damage to your online visibility and traffic.
Did You Change Too Much at Once?
Relaunching a website or undertaking a comprehensive website redesign can be an exciting opportunity to revamp your online presence. However, changing too much at once can confuse search engines and erode the SEO equity you’ve accumulated over time. If you’ve noticed that your new website ruined your SEO, it might be due to several factors.
One common issue is moving to a new domain without proper redirects. If you forgot about redirects, search engines might not associate your new domain with the authority of your previous site, leading to a significant drop in rankings. Additionally, altering URL structures without implementing 301 redirects can result in broken links, causing frustration for users and hindering search engine crawling.
Non-optimized images introduced during the redesign can also slow down your website’s load time, negatively affecting user experience and search rankings. A lack of text or thin content can make it difficult for search engines to understand what your pages are about, reducing your relevance for important keywords.
Moreover, neglecting meta descriptions, title tags, and header tags during the redesign process can further diminish your site’s SEO performance. It’s important to maintain these elements to help search engines index your site correctly.
Getting Your Traffic Back
If your new website ruined your SEO and caused a decline in web traffic, there are steps you can take to recover. Start by conducting a thorough SEO audit to identify and fix issues like missing redirects, broken links, and non-optimized images. Also, make sure all your old URLs properly redirect to the new ones to preserve link equity.
Next, add high-quality, relevant text to your content to help search engines understand your pages and offer more value to your visitors. For example, schema markups provide search engines additional context, improving how your site appears in search results. Finally, optimize your images by compressing them to improve page load times, and boost user experience and search rankings.
Recovering lost traffic takes time and consistent effort. By addressing the factors that caused the decline and implementing best practices, you can restore your site’s performance and continue to grow your online presence. Need more help? Working with professional SEO and PPC services can get your site back on track and drive the traffic your business deserves.
