The Search Marketing Advisor Newsletter Article: May 2004, Volume 3, Issue 1
Maximize Your Site Re-Design
by Brian Kaminski, Client Services Director, iProspect
Clients often approach me as they are planning a website re-design. They want to determine how the re-design may impact their search engine marketing (SEM) campaign and they want to know how they can minimize negative repercussions.
I never look at re-designs as an inevitable SEM disaster. Instead I focus on the long-term improvements that can be attained if the re-design is done correctly. There are four key areas on which you should focus during a re-design:
Setting expectations
Improving the new site
Transferring from old to new
Timing of each step
Setting Expectations
Expectation setting needs to begin with an honest assessment of your website’s current situation, as this will determine what is at stake. Where is your website currently found within the major search engines? The best way to determine this is to check your site’s visibility within some of the top search properties -- such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN and AOL -- by performing queries on your most important keywords within these engines, or by relying on a search engine marketing firm to provide you with a visibility report. It is also helpful to examine log file data to identify the amount of traffic that is getting to your site via search engines. If you track revenue and conversions, utilize that data as well.
It is a safe bet that a significant re-design (one that contains more than look-and-feel changes) will result in the short-term loss of nearly all website visibility. It usually takes 2-4 months (sometimes longer with a very competitive keyword set) to earn back that lost visibility. During this time, you should increase your investment in keyword buys like Overture and Google AdWords, as well as paid inclusion programs like the Overture SiteMatch Xchange. This will minimize drops in traffic and website conversions.
Building a Better Site
A re-design is the perfect opportunity to build a more crawler-friendly website. Typical areas of improvement include: more compact site code, increased internal linking within the site, intuitive directory and file naming, and, of course, improvements to site content in order to more closely appeal to search engines’ algorithms.
Transitioning the Old Site
It is important to make use of the successful elements of your old site. Determine your best performing pages (those that are ranking well within the major search engines) and try to keep them part of your new site. If there are filename changes, make sure that any old pages that have been indexed with search engines are re-directed to relevant new pages on the updated version of the website. Make sure to lobby the editors at directories like Yahoo! and The Open Directory to update your listings. Finally, ask anyone who links to an outdated page on your site to update the link to a new page. This will go a long way towards helping to keep up the credibility of your new website.
Timing
Start thinking about all the items I have mentioned as early as possible. Make sure that individuals in your organization understand both the short and long term implications of a site re-design. It is usually much easier to make significant website changes if they are considered from day one. Above all, remember that this re-design is an opportunity to rid yourself of problematic items and increase your long-term potential for driving natural or (“organic”) search engine traffic.
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