sanity through a redesign!!! seo and staying visible in search results
DESCRIPTION
Website redesigns, like death and taxes, can only be ignored for so long. When your time comes, how do you prepare and then interpret the resulting value of redesign efforts? How do you maintain the search visibility and organic traffic you already have? Will you be able to compare apples to apples or will other fruit enter into the picture? Barbara, who has helped countless clients preserve their search mojo during a redesign delivers advice on what to measure to prove your success and what to ignore to maintain your sanity. See other presentation that is a handout with the top 10 search/metrics-related things to do when redesigning a site. First presented at #emetrics San Francisco 2014.TRANSCRIPT
Sanity Through a
Redesign!!!
Barbara CollSF 2014
@webmama
@webmama
Top Reasons for Redesign and #1 Effect on
Measurement, Visibility and Sanity
New SEO Company = Tactical changes too many to mention in this small box
New CEO/CMO = New brand agency, new web design
Repositioning of Company/products = New content, new keywords
Company Name Change/Acquisition = Domain Name Change. Every URL Changes
@webmama
Prepare for Redesign (1)
Keyword discovery research – what keywords define the company
Which content drives traffic into site (review landing pages) and set content/SEO strategy to maintain that content
Look at Page Authority (moz.com) and don’t kill pages with high page authority
@webmama
Keyword Category Domination
Company = VMware
Keyword = virtualization
@webmama
Instances of Keyword/Content
http://www.vmware.com/products/
http://www.vmware.com/virtualization/ *
http://www.vmware.com/virtualization/virtualization-basics/what-is-virtualization.html *
http://www.vmware.com/products/desktop-virtualization.html *
* URLs/Filenames the same as pre-redesign
@webmama
Internal Content Links Maintained
Footers
Imagery
Main Nav
Video
@webmama
Prepare for Redesign (2)The Tedious Part
WebMaster Tools – Queries, Keywords, Clicks - TAKE SCREENSHOTS!
What do search results look like today! TAKE SCREENSHOTS!
As much as I hate to say it – run ranking reports
Set up redirect file for .htaccess
@webmama
@webmama
@webmama
@webmama@webmama
Little Things
Error Page in place?
Turned on the tracking code (since it was probably off on the beta site)?
Filtered out the design/development team (Search company too) from the analytics?
Connected Google analytics and Google Webmaster tools and have the same person looking at both
@webmama
Right about NowSpot check for redirect errors – click on organic
search results
Home page change? 3 hours
Sitelinks? 1-3 days
Old and new URLs at same time – yup – some overlap
DNS propagation – 4-5 days across world
Major ranking changes – 2 weeks
Launch
2-weeks
@webmama
What can you compare from previous site?
@webmama
Organic Search TrafficComparing Pre-Post LaunchTraditional Analytics
Full siteVisitsUnique VisitorsTime on siteBounce rate
Traffic to pages where URL has NOT changed
QuestionableNumber of Pages Viewed/visitForm completions
@webmama
Organic Search TrafficComparing Pre-Post Launch Queries, Keywords, Clicks
@webmama
What CAN’T you compare from previous site?
@webmama
Organic Search TrafficWhat you CAN’T CompareContent by page (unless you kept the URLs the
same) (ie. Visits to company/mgt/ceo would need to be mapped to company/management/ceo)
# of Pages visited
Path through site
Top content
Landing pages
Questionable Consumption of resources (whitepapers, etc)
@webmama@webmama
Go back and revisit your screenshots of search results prior to redesign.
-Did it work?
-Do the snippets make sense?
Question – when do you intervene?
@webmama
VisualSearch
Turns UpLots of Things
Barbara Coll
@webmama#emetrics