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SEO Sanity During a Redesign
This document outlines best practices for conducting a website redesign from an SEO perspective. It recommends developing the new site separately, blocking search engines from indexing it, and setting up 301 redirects for all changed URLs. On launch day, the redirects should go live and restrictions removed. Post-launch, analytics should be closely monitored for any issues with traffic, rankings or indexing. The key takeaways are to avoid confusing search engines, use 301 redirects properly, and watch analytics carefully after migrating to the new site.
SEO Sanity During a Redesign
- 1. The ORIGINAL Search MarketingEvent #SESMiami SEO Sanity During a Redesign A process to help you avoid disaster Michael Gracen SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment SEO, SEM & Digital Manager
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- 5. @mikegracen #SESMiami NEVER take your livewebsite down
- 6. @mikegracen #SESMiami Keep new pages frombeing found (before their time)
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- 8. @mikegracen #SESMiami Block Googlebot’s crawl accessfrom dev environment
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- 12. @mikegracen #SESMiami Switch servers 2-4 weeksbefore or after redesign
- 13. @mikegracen #SESMiami Crawl existing site withScreaming Frog SEO Spider
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- 16. @mikegracen #SESMiami Great time to optimizeand remove dupe content
- 17. @mikegracen #SESMiami Keep existing URL structureas much as possible
- 18. @mikegracen #SESMiami 301 redirect URLs onpage by page basis
- 19. @mikegracen #SESMiami Do NOT use302 redirects, always use 301
- 20. @mikegracen #SESMiami OK to consolidate pages,but don’t orphan anything
- 21. @mikegracen #SESMiami Don’t delete… update content orredirect to relevant page
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- 23. @mikegracen #SESMiami OK to 404pages that have tons of crappy incoming links
- 24. @mikegracen #SESMiami Great time to reviewyour backlink profile
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- 26. @mikegracen #SESMiami CAREFULLY use Google disavow toolto remove crappy links
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- 28. @mikegracen #SESMiami Add Google Analytics code totrack and find errors
- 29. @mikegracen #SESMiami Use Screaming Frog tocreate new XML sitemap
- 30. @mikegracen #SESMiami Make sure ONLY new URLsare included
- 31. @mikegracen #SESMiami Add rel=canonical to ensureGoogle indexes correct page version
- 32. @mikegracen #SESMiami Sanity check robots.txt forany ‘gotchas’
- 33. @mikegracen #SESMiami Google now wants accessto CSS and Javascript
- 34. @mikegracen #SESMiami Sanity check tracking codes: GA,GWT, BWT, ad tracking, etc.
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- 36. @mikegracen #SESMiami Add annotation in GAfor a ‘line in the sand’
- 37. @mikegracen #SESMiami Remove all instances ofNoindex, Nofollow
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- 39. @mikegracen #SESMiami Push your new 301redirects live
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- 49. @mikegracen #SESMiami Takeaway #2 301 redirectsare the critical piece of the puzzle.
- 50. @mikegracen #SESMiami Takeaway #3 Watch analyticslike a hawk post-launch.
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