Till 2018, the internet holds more than 1 billion websites. But the sad truth is that only 200 million of them are active. It is due to the fact that the owners did not pay attention in the improvement and the revamping of their websites. As a result, they fell short of the chances of getting more traffic. What should you do?
Yes, you got it right. Changing the content and the look of the website with the changing time. Redesigning a website to bring the necessary changes, advancements and functions is as important as revamping a software. Just launching a website isn’t the only thing you are supposed to do.
People have understood this fact, and now they have started paying close attention to each and every aspect of redesigning the website to keep up with time and to offer the best to their viewers. There are certain things which are to be considered after website refurbishment, and the most significant of them is the loss of organic traffic and rankings.
Have a look at the ways in which you can diagnose and recover traffic as well as rankings.
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Collect information-
Use SEO tools to gather information of your website such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console. Also look for the date on which you launched the website, the URL of the website, and the alternative URLs. If your website or business contains historic keywords rankings, also check it.
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Confirmation-
Reviewing the collected information is the next step. Study the results of Google Search Console and Google Analytics. What to look for? Reading the loss of traffic from the day of starting the website refurbishment. You might be able to notice the changes in the traffic on weekly basis as the drop may be slow, and steady.
It is a must to look for the magnitude of the traffic of the website, because remaking of the website can terribly lead to a steep fall in the organic traffic. Looking for a variety of channels of organic traffic is another option and if it is unaffected, then website rebuilding is to be claimed.
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Comprehend the losses-
The best improvement can be introduced by analysis of the losses and remediation.
What does it need to get the right understanding of information?
The answer is better understanding of keyword rankings and pages.
- Run the reports
Look for the areas where the rankings may have been dropping. If it is difficult to get the historic keyword rankings, then use SEO tools.
- Landing page traffic
Compare the changes in the traffic to the period prior and check the pages generating the highest traffic. If you have added more quality content in the website but still there is no traffic, then there are high chances of some technical issues in the design of the website.
What to do?
- Put this new information in a spreadsheet and match up the old and new pages.
- Use Wayback Machine to have a view of the previous version of the website.
- Have a look at those pages which were ranking.
- Compare the pages with the relevant pages on the new site
Benefit of doing all these steps?
Comprehension of the physical changes to the pages.
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Set the things right-
- Missing information
Redirecting the pages may help. Keep the URLs of the all the pages same. Put a 301 redirect from the old page to the newly crafted page.
How to do this?
Collect nearly 10 highest traffic pages from the old site and then try to visit these pages in any of the browser. In case you don’t get any redirects from this part, then this is the problematic area.
What if they redirect?
Check those pages in a tool such as online HTTP header tool, ScreamingFrog and then ensure that the correct redirect has been put on the correct page.
What you need to keep in mind while doing this?
Doing this end-to-end helps i.e. you need to do it in a crawling tool and in a browser.
The next step is testing all the old URLs as well as the redirected pages.
- Content missing
Put some efforts and ensure that the website has high traffic content. This will help you in getting an idea of the things happening in the website.
When the content issue arises?
In case of getting 404 error or it is redirecting to a generic page.
- Changes in the domain and the protocol
If you have moved from http to https, then you need to consider the redirects. As both of them are not same. Pay attention to protocol, domain, subdomain and the other detail.
- Technicality is the cause of issues
Technical optimization of the new site may arise some problems such as canonical URLs, crawl issues, and indexation. This may lead to destruction of the website, so auditing of the website and SEO is required for the assurance of the correct search engine optimization techniques.
- Optimization Issues
Check for the correct implementation of the website by crawling your site.
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When you don’t find any issues
What if you checked for all the options discussed above and did not find anything problematic. What to do in that case?
- Change the algorithm-
You might need to check for this in case you launched your new site at the timeframe of a Google Algorithm change.
- Correct tagging of the pages-
Check for the proper working of analytics. Tag the pages and the report all the views.
- Check for the security issues-
Review indexed pages as well as identify if you find anything suspicious by commanding for your URL.
Author's bio;
Jessica is a writer, editor and academic consultant. I offer Science Homework Help to the students and work at an Essay editing service company. Follow me on Twitter.