How to Preserve SEO During a Website Re-design

This is a question I get frequently, “If I redesign my site will it negatively affect my SEO?”. Honest answer is it depends.

One of the most common mistakes people make is to rename newly designed pages. For example, the current site’s about page’s navigation title might be called “about-us” and you decide to rename it “about-our-team”. That may make more sense for the new content but if Google has ranked your about page and is looking for “about-us”, your name change just cost you valuable credit towards your SEO.

A simply work around for this is to create a site map of current navigation and if changes need to be made, create 301 re-directs. It’s sort of the web equivalent to a change of address or forwarding your mail.

Other helpful tips can be found in this most excellent article on The Manifest.com.