SEO & Website Redesign - Traps, Tools and Techniques (as presented at SES London)

SEO & the Website Redesign Process Traps, Tricks, Techniques & Tools

Why Redesign?
Revamping your website gives you a unique set of problems….
This presentation focuses on the things are unique to redevelopment rather than building a new site….

Website Redesign Pitfalls
Problems stem from:
Redesigning on a whim
No concerted plan or running before walking
Fallen out with designers/developers
Not analytical enough – changing pages that convert well
No research or survey data
No benchmarks or targets
Lack of understanding and knowledge of SEO
Unrealistic budget, resources or timescales
Inadequate security

Example Google Malware Page

Website Redesign Pitfalls
Common Traps:
Change of domain or TLD – no redirection
Change in URLs – no redirects or global redirects
Indexed pages in search engines are not found (404 error)
Loss of site traffic
Loss of conversions on previously good converting pages
Loss of position in the SERPs
Loss of site in the SERPs
Loss of job?

Website Redesign Process Project Definition Site Structure Visual Design Site Development Test & Refine Launch

SEO & Website Redesign Process Project Scope Site Architecture Visual Design Site Development Test & Refine Launch Benchmarking Ongoing Updates Celebration + Website Analytics, SEO Analytics + Webmaster Tools + Website Analytics, SEO Analytics + User Tests & Survey Results + User Tests & Survey Results + Continuous Website & SEO monitoring + KPIs, Targets, Benchmarks Project Scope Benchmarking Ongoing Updates Celebration Test & Refine Launch Site Development Test & Refine Launch Visual Design Site Development Test & Refine Launch Project Scope Benchmarking Ongoing Updates Project Scope Benchmarking Celebration Ongoing Updates Project Scope Benchmarking Site Architecture Visual Design Site Development Test & Refine Launch

Project Scope
Why do you need a redesign?
Establish Commercial Goals
Establish Project Goals
Analysis, Research & Reality Check
Agree Website & SEO KPIs/Targets
Budget
Team & Timescales
Useful questionnaires www.web-redesign.com/

Project Scope: Analytics & Research
Website statistics
Site Visits, Popular Content, Conversion Analysis
Screen size, browsers, Traffic sources
Customer & User survey
Likes and dislikes
Log files
404s, other errors

Project Scope: SEO Research
Website Analytics
Add analytics & Webmaster Tools to old site (if not already added)
SEO Analysis
Basic Site Audit – highlights obvious site issues
Competitive analysis
PPC Campaign analysis
Which keywords are converting?
Consider using them in your redesign
Strategic Planning Gap
How large is the gap between my site and my competitors?
Do I have the resources and desire to commit?

Basic SEO Site Audit

Competitive SEO Audit

Project Scope: Project Goals
Set Project Targets & Benchmarks:
Create a set of benchmarks that you can compare at Campaign Start & Campaign End
Examples:
Keyword ranking comparison
Competitive benchmarking – League Tables
Website Analytics KPIs
Revenue, Sales conversions, Visits, Goals
Unique Visitors, Page Views, Bounce Rate, Time on site

Project Scope: Project Planning
Excel
Basecamp
Fogbugz

Site Architecture
SEO Friendly – information architecture, navigation URLs, Meta Tags, coding (separation of HTML and CSS) – Not using JS links
W3C compliant
Old sitemap and hierarchy vs New Sitemap & hierarchy
Treejack (“Analytics for a website you haven’t built yet”)
Plan 301 redirects
Plan to make it fast…

Site Architecture

Visual Design
Sketches – sharing initial thoughts and ideas
Wireframes – sharing with the client
Test initial design
Internal team
Client
User groups

Which Content Management System ?
Proprietary?
Free/Open Source
Drupal
Joomla
Wordpress
Numerous SEO Plug-ins
XML Sitemap generator
Site Development

Content
Golden opportunity - How can you improve your site?
What did your customers/users tell you?
“ If you were running our business how would you improve our website?”
Video - DIY Video Suite - Animoto
Avatars - Site Pal
Update Plan - build in feedback - Kampyle
Make it easy for people to link to your content, e.g. tweetmeme
Community support – Get Satisfaction 2.0
Organising Content – Optimal Sort

Testing
Type of testing:
Functional & Performance
X-Browser testing
Usability
Options:
Friends and family
Focus groups – internal and external
Usability testing labs & eye tracking tools
Online Tools:
Five Second Test – initial test of designs – clicks and keywords
Litmus – X-browser testing for websites and email
Crazy Egg – visualise user behaviour – heatmaps and clicks
Userfly – watch videos of your users
Feedback Army – Ask users questions and get them to perform specific tasks
Mechanical Turk – Human Intelligence Task (US Only)
Jmeter - Scalability & performance - record interactions, playback multiple threads
Yslow , Google Web Toolkit – Browser plug-ins and developer toolkits

Usability Testing
How much testing should I do?
Jacob Nielsen one of the best-known usability gurus, says:
“ The best results come from testing no more than 5 users and running as many small tests as you can afford.”
http://www.useit.com

Launch
SEO
PPC
Blogging
Social Media
Email
PR
Video

Benchmarking
Compare initial results with campaign start
Post launch questionnaires and compare results with campaign start
Survey Monkey
4Q
Feedback Tools
Kampyle.com
Get Satisfaction
Ensure you have a system for automatically monitoring website and SEO changes

Benchmark Ranking Data

Competitive League Table

Benchmark Analytics Data

Fresh content
Landing Page Optimisation
Ensure your analytics software tracks conversions
Benchmark against performance before redesign
Objections/Counter Objections
Landing Page Checklist – Have you thought of everything?
Test – Split A/B or Multivariate
Online PR campaign
Link building
Track your ongoing SEO Campaign – Analytics SEO
Do interesting stuff and get people talking about it!
Ongoing Site & SEO Development

SEO Website Redesign Process Tools Page Optimisation Tools – Vertster Maxymiser Pagealizer Google Website Optimzer Feedback tools - Kampyle.com Get Satisfaction User behaviour - Crazy Egg User feelings & tasks - Feedback Army Mechanical Turk Functional & Performance – Jmeter Yslow Google Web Toolkit DIY Video Editor – Animoto Avatars – Site Pal Word of mouth – tweetmeme Community support – Kampyle Get Satisfaction 2.0 Initial Testing - http://fivesecondtest.com W3C Validation - http://validator.w3.org Integrated Website & SEO Analysis - www.analyticsseo.com Bulk domain name checker - www.databasepower.net Project Management – www.basecamphq.com www.fogbugz.com List of Resources & Tools Project Stage Celebration Ongoing Development Benchmarking Launch Testing Site Development Visual Design Site Architecture Project Scope Too many to mention! 6 Usability Testing - Jacob Nielsen Test Designs - Five Second Test User videos - Userfly X-Browser tests - Litmus 5 Content Management Systems – Drupal Joomla Wordpress Drupal SEO-plug-ins Joomla SEO-plug-ins Wordpress SEO Organising Content – Optimal Sort XML Sitemap generator 4 Site Design - http://balsamiq.com 3 Webmaster Tools - Google Yahoo Bing 2 It’s more fun if you take it offline! 9 Ongoing SEO Campaign Management Landing Page Checklist 8 Automated SEO Tools 7 Design Process - www.utexas.edu/learn/designprocess/ Questionnaires - www.web-redesign.com Questionnaire Templates – www.esurveyspro.com Survey tools – www.mailchimp.com www.4qsurvey.com E-mail clients – www.dotmailer.com 1

Celebration (Post-launch)
Take pride in your re-designed website and enjoy a hot…
Or a cold…
Come and meet us on Stand 11 - We’ll show you some of our website redesign and SEO tools and some other good ones that didn’t make the presentation
Laurence O’Toole – [email_address] - + 44 208 977 4465
www.analyticsseo.com
www.websiteredevelopment.com
www.twitter.com/analyticsseo

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SEO & Website Redesign - Traps, Tools and Techniques (as presented at SES London)

by Dizzy Heights on Feb 18, 2010

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SEO & Website Redesign - Traps, Tools and Techniques (as presented at SES London) — Presentation Transcript