UX Antwerp Meetup, 26th of September, 2017 - organised by UXprobe https://www.uxpro.be/  Pawel Sokolowski, SXO Leader at Team Leader (Gent, Belgium)  "How to redesign with SEO in mind"  We would like to make website’s users happy. That kind of magic only happens when all touch points are taken into account. Sometimes things goes wrong and your website looses its first and crucial touch point: rankings. Without traffic, even an extremely well UX-optimised website won’t provide any value for its owner.  During this presentation, Pawel will provide a few examples of websites that went wrong and will provide a best practice overview to avoid such mistakes.  Pawel Sokolowski is an SX architect with 15 years experience on SEO/CRO. Co-founder of Clusteric Search Auditor, he is currently leading SXO challenge in Teamleader NV. He’s also a UX passionate. 

1. How to redesign
with SEO in mind
Pawel Sokolowski
CLUSTERIC.com

2. Why with SEO in mind?
STDC framework
+care ;)

3. Why with SEO in mind?
Budget: x4
Traffic: -90%
CAC: +700%
Sales: ...

4. What was SEO?
Search Engine Optimization
1990's – 2015(manual → algorithm phase)
➔ Keywords
➔ Backlinks
➔ Quantity

5. Google issues with quality
● Results not relevant to intention
● SERP's easy to manipulate
● Growing Search Quality Team

6. Google algorithm changes
PQ/NM TREND:
manual action → algorithmic AI
Disavow tool

7. “Google’s goal is
to provide users
with the most
relevant results
and a great user
experience”

8. What is SEO today?
Search Experience Optimization
2015 – now (algorithm + artificial intelligence)
# Intention
# Experience
# Quality

9. RankBrain – understanding intention
# machine learning and language processing
Source:stonetemple.com

10. Customer Journey
# Intention ... snippet → CTR (on page level)
# Bounce Rate / Next page(dwell time)
# Engagement (ex: time on page)
# User's next step?

11. A/B testing & Analytic
Ranking signal SERP A/B testing
(if A is better than B for
query N on this same
position)

12. Importance of ranking factors
Source:semrush.com

13. Google SERP in 2017
● Machine learning
● Language processing (AI)
● UX factors
● A/B testing & Analytics

14. Most important OnPage elements
● URL structure
● Headers / meta tags (title, description, href-lang, og:title)
● Correct document structure (H1-H6, multimedia, strong)
● Optimized images (alt description, size)
● Internal linking

15. Redesign example
Redesign and platform migration: 01.04.2016
Source:ahrefs.com

16. Redesign issues
Team & experience
Agreement
Content
Technology
Testing

17. Plan → migrate → run process

18. Redesign process
User personas
Usability & A/B testing
Surveys / Polls / Interviews
User flow, forms, checkout analysis
Heat / Scroll / Click Map analysis
Pattern recognition
Funnel analysis
Wireframing
Prototyping

19. 1. Planning with SEO in mind
● Calculate impact
● Add shareholders, assign team
● Plan migration time
● Add additional channels/budget to cover traffic fluctuation
● Plan optimal site architecture and URL structure
● Add content curation to planning phase
Questions?

20. 2. Preparation - benchmark
● Measure number of indexed pages in popular search engines
● Crawl real visibility (pages/images) per search engine
● Crawl /audit old website (and fix all technical errors if this is only redesign)
● Set up keywords monitoring (Google/Bing)
● Backup website/database & setup local environment
(check if sitemap files, htaccess, robots.txt are available in backup)
● Benchmark old site's speed for important pages / templates
Questions?

21. 2. Preparation – data driven decision
● Organic visibility (GA)
● Popular pages (GA/GSC)
● Keywords / pages / CTR (GSC)
● Landing pages per channel (GSC)
● Best converting pages (GSC)
● Hot areas (Hotjar, Yandex)
● User flow and goals (GA)
● 404 errors (GA)
Questions?
reporting internal sources

22. 2. Preparation – data driven decision
● Best pages
● Backlinks
● Keywords
● Anchors
● Social media signals
● Broken links
Questions?
reporting external sources

23. 2. Preparation – detailed plan
● Migration roadmap
● Content update / curation
● URL structure
● User flow, internal linking
● 301 redirect map
● Additional files (robots, htaccess)
Questions?
Communicate planned changes to all shareholders

24. 3. Beta phase – migration
● Setup test environment
● Set access to test environment only to certain IP range
● Setup external tracking codes (analytic and UX tools)
● Audit site structure and content
● Check sitemap, robots.txt, htaccess files
● Audit code quality and page speed
● Check flow of internal page rank with new architecture
● Setup custom alerts (errors, traffic drop, high bounce rate, etc)
Questions?

25. 4. Launch phase
● Check if GA is working (live view)
● Check crawlability (access as Google bot, set crawl speed)
● Flush cache, upload new sitemap to GSC
● Test: error codes, speed, 301 redirects
● Crawl live site and check if it has proper titles, descriptions
in meta and corresponding Google snippets
● Test broken links and soft/hard 404
● Check dofollow/nofollow link in structure and anchors
● Update/create goals and views in GA
Questions?

26. 5. After launch
● Check indexation status in SE
● Compare website speed (old/new)
● Benchmark SERPs (old/new)
● Update old links with new ones whenever possible
● Resubmit disavow file(s)
● Update SEO strategy (according to current situation)
Questions?

27. 6. Maintenance

28. What to expect?
● Keep traffic during migration phase
● Increasing organic traffic in next months
● Better conversion rates
● Higher engagement metrics

29. THANKS
http://clusteric.com