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Are you familiar with the different ways SEO can help with website redesigns? Implementing SEO strategies on your website can help reach your sales goals and overall strengthen the growth of your site.
Keep on reading to learn more about six different ways SEO can help you get the most out of your website redesign.
Key Ways You Should Integrate SEO into Your Website Redesign
- Interconnect your site – Internal linking allows you to naturally connect pages, making your site more integrated and easier to navigate for users, while fulfilling a ranking signal of search engines. Adding this element as part of your strategy can go a long way in improving your site.
- Consider content strategy – You want the content on your website to be well-organized and easily understandable, so engaging in content marketing tactics as part of an SEO engagement is key.
- Address technical issues – Websites, especially older ones, can feature a lot of bugs, broken elements, and missing components. During or after a website redesign, you want to ensure HTML markups are in place, broken links are fixed, 404 errors are removed, duplicate content is rectified, and page speed is up to par.
- Implement schema – Search engines need to properly understand your website if they are going to rank you accurately, so you need to have schema in place that helps them in these efforts. There are many forms, including schema for products, reviews, local businesses, events, and more.
- Be conversion-friendly – The way that your website is set up plays a large part in how users convert. Do you make it easy to fill out forms? How strong are your calls to action? Keep this in mind when optimizing your website to get the most out of your marketing efforts.
Internal Linking
Internal linking refers to the practice of linking to your own website’s inner pages, blog posts, and the like in your content. This naturally helps users navigate through your site easily and find the content they are looking for.
When internally linking your website after a redesign, you are giving Google new links to pay attention to, which can give you the opportunity to improve your rankings.
Through internal linking, Google and other search engines can see which pages on your site are the most important and understand the information on your site more clearly for search intent.
Content Strategy
During a website redesign, it’s indispensable to continuously update content on your website with new information and present your content in a way your audience will be intrigued.
High-quality and organized content relies on strategic content placement that is easily understood and readable for users to engage with.
Content marketing is a fundamental segment in SEO and can help you assess what pages to optimize further, how to arrange your navigation, and more.
SEO-Friendly Page Structure.
Utilizing best practices when it comes to on-page tactics can ensure that your website is built in an SEO-friendly manner. For example, header tags help structure the layout of information on a web page by separating headings and subheadings. They also improve the readability of a webpage and define the headings of a page.
There are six types of headings used in website code: H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, and H6. Traditionally, these levels rank in order of importance, with H1 being the highest level and H6 being the least.
Potential Technical Issues
Many potential technical SEO issues can arise after you redesign your website if you do not address them before launch. It’s essential to be ready for any issues that might come about, with solutions at hand.
Some things that you want to check are:
- Duplicate content
- Broken links
- Messy URLs
- Possible 404 errors
- Incomplete 401 redirects
- Poor mobile experience
- And much more
Schema Structured Data
Schema is code that is created and implemented on websites to help search engines, such as Google, get a better understanding of the website’s content and purpose. Adding schema markup to your HTML can help search engines understand your site and better place your site in SERPs.
Popular types of schema you can add to your site include:
Page Speed
Page speed refers to how fast an internet browser can load a page on your website. When pages are not optimized correctly for load time, it can drive users away, meaning there’s a chance you might miss out on a portion of potential customers.
Assessing your website’s page speed is an essential part of the user experience and can increase the possibility of more traffic, new leads completing a conversion on your website, and ultimately more revenue. And improving it before you launch your website can save you a lot of hassle down the road.
You can learn the various ways you can improve site speed in our blog post.
Conversion Rate Optimization
Regardless of your industry or application, your website needs to convert to bring in customers. Conversion rate optimization is the process of increasing the percentage of website visitors who complete a desired action (filling out a form, signing up for a service, etc). Conversion rate optimization is done to offer a better user experience and make the path to a desired action as smooth as possible. Your site might benefit from conversion rate optimization if you struggle with:
- Site speed – As mentioned above, load time is critical when users land on your site. 40% of site visitors will leave your site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. When your site loads quickly, you can expect your conversion rate to be higher.
- Bounce rate – Bounce rate is the percent of users who land on your website and click away without taking any action (like making a purchase or reaching out for a service). High bounce rates indicate that people are not converting from the content presented on your website.
- Exit rate – Exit rate is the number of people who leave your website after visiting multiple pages without taking action. Bounce rate and exit rate both decrease your overall conversion rate.
Before making any changes to your site, it is essential to understand how users behave on your site and what your website traffic looks like. Implement heat mapping and an analytics tool to help with these items.
How to Make the Most of Your New Design for More Sales
So, how well should your website convert? According to WordStream, the average conversion rate of a page is 2.4%, and the top 10% of sites convert at a rate of 11.5% or higher. But don’t worry if your site isn’t there yet. As a marketing team, there are a variety of different tactics that can be used to optimize conversion rates on your website. Not only are these tactics friendly for users, but they can also boost your chances of ranking in organic search results:
- Write informative content – Content is a critical aspect of enhancing SEO and boosting conversion rate. Writing high-quality content positions you as an expert in your field. Be sure to aim for 250-500 words of copy, clear headers, relevant images, links, and a strong CTA.
- Use CTAs – Throughout the copy, use strong CTA buttons. Strong CTAs can increase conversion rates by up to 87%. Test color, size, and language on the buttons to see what works best for your site. When using CTAs, try to make them fit the page and encourage users to “answer the call.” Personalized CTAs convert 42% more visitors than generic or vague CTAs, so be sure to use attention-grabbing phrases that fit the purpose of the page.
- Implement contact forms – Put contact forms on frequently visited pages to increase conversion rate. This reduces the barrier of having to navigate to a different page. To further optimize the conversion rate, limit the number of fields on the form to make it easy to fill out the forms.
- Add pop-up windows – Pop-up windows are a way to increase onsite conversions. They need to be accommodating to the user experience and appeal to your website visitors. However, it is important to make them easy to click out of and avoid using too many pop-ups, as you don’t want users to get frustrated and leave your site.
- Have a chat platform – LiveChat and similar platforms help increase website conversions because it gives users a way to have their questions answered urgently. Ideally, a live agent is around to answer, but if not, a bot will do the trick! Now, how does this tie back to conversion? According to Kayako, if your company offers live chat support, 38% of consumers are more likely to purchase from your company. And this is just from having a support agent ready to field any questions.
This post was originally published in May 2022 and has been updated with new information.
