Time to read: 8 minutes
With an increasing emphasis put on digital presence in recent years, many businesses have undertaken a website redesign to help improve their standings. Just as the internet has become a more important piece of any business strategy, the design and usability of a website has become a priority in order to keep an edge over competitors.
And while launching a new website can significantly improve your overall traffic and leads, the transition from old to new is not always as smooth as most businesses hope.
Did You Launch a New Website and Experience a Drop in Traffic?
Unfortunately, this is a common issue for many businesses. However, there is likely a simple explanation for the decrease in your traffic and, if addressed within the first few months, your previous levels of traffic can be easily restored.
When redesigning a website, one of the most imperative steps is properly redirecting traffic from the old website URLs to the relevant URLs on your new site.
In properly redirecting, you are simply telling Google that all of the traffic formerly going to one URL should now be driven to the new URL, like changing your mailing address.
What to Do if You Suspect That You Haven’t Redirected Your Site Properly
- Check the Google Search Console – It is important to assess your website’s performance and check if there are any other problems preventing Google from properly indexing your site. Google Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools) will enable you to check your website for problems like:
- Found errors
- Broken links
- Issues with indexing
This is also where you will find messages from Google about issues with your site or even potential malware attacks, so it is an important step in diagnosing the problem.
- Talk to your web team – If you’re still unsure about the issue, consult your web team. It’s useful to try and get a full understanding of all the changes made on the site recently when looking for sources of the error.
- Consult with an SEO professional – If you’re still unsuccessful in diagnosing the drop in traffic, reach out to an SEO expert in order to resolve the problem as quickly as possible and restore your site traffic and leads.
The Importance of Redirecting
There can be a number of positive factors about your old website that will help boost your volume of search traffic, even if the site’s overall design is outdated. When creating a new site and design, you don’t want to sacrifice these positive elements. They include:
- Current rankings in Google
- Inbound links
- The age of your website
Remember, you do not want to lose this equity in transitioning your website, so it is important to let Google know you have launched a new version of your site.
If redirecting is conducted correctly, there should be a smooth transition when the new site is launched. Furthermore, there are several ways to redirect traffic, but one of the best practices for SEO purposes is 301 redirects.
Does It Matter What URL You Redirect the Page To?
Some people wonder if it would be enough to just redirect all old pages to a new homepage. Unfortunately, it’s a bit more complicated than that. In fact, simply redirecting all of the old URLs to the homepage would actually hurt you in the long run. For instance:
- Google is focused on offering the best experience for its users and tries to provide them with the most helpful information based on the keywords searched by ranking websites accordingly.
- One way to ensure you will continue to provide users with the most relevant information in search results is to redirect URLs to a new link with corresponding content, rather than sending them to the homepage to search for it themselves.
Moreover, if you have a specific product page on the old iteration of your site, then it is imperative you redirect that traffic to the same product page on your new site.
There may be some cases when your new site does not have pages that match up exactly to the pages on your old site. In that case, it is best to use your judgement and redirect the traffic to the link you think would be most helpful for the user. Even a more loosely connected page is better than the homepage in terms of redirects.
Redirecting Can Significantly Help the Health of Your New Website
Redirecting your URLs can be a daunting task, especially if there are hundreds or even thousands of pages indexed by Google, but it will prove to be well worth the effort because it creates benefits like:
- Recovering lost traffic from search engines to significantly improve performance in the short run
- Gaining lost equity to boost your overall SEO efforts in the long run
- Keeping customers and potential customers happy and frustration-free
- Ensuring Google doesn’t get confused about your website, its pages, or your site structure
When it comes down to it, Google wants to direct users to the best content possible for their search queries. A website that features a lot of 404s and other errors, or content being redirected to non-related pages, makes Google’s algorithm “doubt” the site and its pages’ viability for search results since sending users to broken or irrelevant pages isn’t desired.
But at a more granular level, it impacts user interaction as well. No one who is conducting a search wants to go to a broken page, or to type in a specific search term only to be taken to an unrelated page or the homepage. Customers want to find what they were searching for, so redirected pages greatly assist with that.
Case Studies That Show the Impact of Website Redesigns
At Sixth City, we’ve worked with a lot of clients over the years, and in that time we’ve spearheaded many website redesign projects. When we do so, we always make sure redirects are properly implemented to ensure no traffic is lost. In some cases, we have even rescued sites that had poor designs and no redirecting, saving them from future lost traffic, leads, and revenue.
Our team has compiled case studies over the years, with website design and development efforts often being a key component of our work. Here are a couple of examples:
TYKMA Electrox
For this laser marking systems manufacturer, we provided a complete SEO campaign with its foundation including a redesigned website. TYKMA Electrox was very concerned with losing traffic from a redesign, understandably, but our proactive steps meant they didn’t skip a beat.
With a fresh website in tow, complete with proper redirects, design for conversion tactics, and strong SEO content, the client saw:
- A 402% improvement in overall traffic
- A 540% improvement in search engine traffic
- A 314% improvement in monthly leads
M/I Homes
For this national home builder, we actually played a bit of cleanup after another company had redesigned their website. To help them boost their traffic following the redesign, we instituted a range of SEO best practices, including content creation and optimization, keyword research, GSC review, and more.
M/I Homes ultimately saw:
- An increase of 10,000 visitors via organic search
- A 48% boost in overall traffic
- A 12% boost in organic traffic
- A 58% boost in new users
Without our efforts, M/I Homes would have lost significant traffic, harming the progress they had made over numerous years.
Important Stats to Know on Redesigns
Our team also regularly compiles stats to give insights to our visitors, so here are some key ones on website development and redesigns.
- 75% of people judge a website’s credibility on its design
- A site with a strong user experience can see a visit-to-lead conversion rate more than 400% higher than a site with a bad design
- Conversion rates on pages can increase by more than 3% when pages include a call to action
- More than 80% of companies launch a website redesign project due to low conversion rates
- 88% of users are less likely to go back to a website after they’ve had a bad experience with it
- Investing in user experience and responsive design choices can bring an ROI of as much as 9,900%
- 60% of online shoppers said that a website’s usability is vital for their shopping experience
- More than 95% of websites have 300-level redirect problems
- “Soft 404s,” which are broken pages that have been lumped together and rerouted straight to the homepage rather than to relevant pages, can negatively impact your site’s value online
Need Help with Your New Site?
Do you need assistance redirecting your old links to improve your traffic? We’ve helped many clients recover lost traffic and increase their monthly leads with our website maintenance services.
Contact Sixth City Marketing today for a quote and let our experts do the work for you!
This article was originally published in 2017 and has been updated to reflect new information.
