When you design your first website for your business, you are excited and anxious to to start your online journey. After you have had your website for a few years, you learn an abundance of information in preparation for your websites redesign.

The lifespan on technology is about 3 to 4 years, although that does not mean you should redesign your website every three years.

SEO Implications of Website Redesign

If your website is not structured well and you are having trouble gaining rankings in search engines, a website redesign may help you gain significant rankings if executed well.

Search engines change algorithms many times per year in an effort to provide better results to users. As the search engines change, many times you have to maintain your site to keep up. If you are not maintaining your website on a regular basis, monthly at minimum, then you are falling further and further behind the curve.

Pretty URL's

Pretty URL’s, sometimes referred to as "permalinks", are important for a few reasons. For one, they help confirm to the user what the page it about. If the URL has the phrase the user is searching for in it, they are more likely to click on it.

Second, a pretty URL with the keywords in it confirms to search engines that the content is really about those keywords. And third, it makes the URL easier to remember to users.

Structured Pages

Check to see if your page is structured well, such as H1 or header tags for the title of the page, "p" or paragraph tags around the body copy and H2,H3 and so on as you work down the page.

Also make sure you have a well written meta title and meta description.

Old Content and Technology

If your website was built with an old technology such as Flash, then you definitely need a website redesign. Flash is not viewable by search engines and it is not viewable on mobile devices.

As far as content, if you have not changed your content in a couple years, refreshing content would be useful. Like technology, business also changes. Your content that was accurate a couple years ago might be a little outdated due to improvements in your services or business.

Internet Marketing Implications of Website Redesign

If you are not currently running any internet marketing campaigns, planning your website redesign with campaigns in mind is very important. If you are currently running marketing campaigns, this is not only very important, it is imperative.

Landing Pages

There are best practices when it comes to landing page design. Whether you currently utilize landing pages or not on your current site, work them in on the redesign. Landing pages are laid out a little differently than your main website.

Best practice on a landing page suggest content on the left, form on the right and no navigation as you would normally expect. This gives the user a single action on the page, which studies suggest increase conversion rates.

URLs and Redirects

When redesigning a website, you have an opportunity to make your URL’s pretty. An important and mostly overlooked item to watch for when updating your URL’s would be your current advertising campaigns and SEO. Extra effort should be made to map all of the old URL’s from your old site to the new URL’s on the new site.

When you redirect all of the old URL’s, use a 301 redirect to keep your SEO efforts at maximum and any penalties at a minimum.