Before kick-starting their website redesigning process, brands must ensure they create their new site design on a temporary URL.
Creating a duplicate of the site on a different domain can help brands test changes and new functions without affecting their primary live website. Next, brands must audit their old site to identify existing SEO issues such as missing page titles and broken links to fix them on their new site.
Most importantly, brands need to “no index” their test or a temporary site to inform search engines not to include content on the new site in search results. Given that the test website is not yet optimised for search, brands can lose their SEO ranking if they do not “no index” their site.
Once brands are through with their changes, they need to test the new website to fix any SEO issues that might crop up. At this stage, marketers should make sure redirect tags are in place to direct users and search engines to the new pages when they try accessing a moved or deleted one. Similarly, sitemaps need to be updated to ensure search engines are aware of certain web pages being moved or changed.
[14 minute read]
