Strategic SEO issues before website redesign | Weboptim
Which SEO areas should you definitely address before deciding on a website brief?
A client would like us to improve their organic rankings. After a lengthy technical audit, market analysis and conversion channel analysis, here are the options:
- redesign the site design
- need to switch to a completely new website
- rethink the business model
This is what happens when you only take SEO seriously after your site is ready. This article will focus on the priority areas where redesign and rebuild are important before:
- broader business strategies
- technical areas in cooperation with developers
- design areas in collaboration with designers
Broader strategy issues
1. How do we communicate our mission online?
Once we have defined the classic marketing values, the question is how do we communicate them?
Are there defining terms that describe the customer's problem / the solution they are looking for? The values may not bring much search. In this case, we need to develop the brand relationship from a problem-solving perspective, according to the needs of each customer.
How competitive are these terms? It may be that the competition is too big and it will be necessary to look for new, alternative, long tail words.
2. Do we understand our customer segments?
Starting points:
- how big is the market? Is the potential audience good or declining? (Google Trend)
- what are the key personas - demographics, motivations, roles and needs?
- how do they behave online and offline, what are the interfaces beyond the website?
Answering these questions will allow you to build your new site structure based on the stages that customers need to go through to reach their goal (purchase, request for quote). Ideally, this process should be done before the site is built, so that you know what specific intent and keywords each page should be built around.
3. Who are our digital competitors?
Knowing who is competing in the digital space can help you make decisions such as website design, user experience or interactions.
First, you need to find out which of the following groups your competitors fall into:
- search competitors: those who are ranked for the products/services we offer. They are competing for the same keywords that we are targeting, but they may have a completely different agenda.
- business competitors: who are currently solving the same problems for customers that we are solving
- industry competitors: who indirectly solve customers' problems
Once they have been grouped, we need to analyse who is where and how much operational resource is needed to reach them:
- what are their size and performance?
- how do they distinguish themselves?
- how strong is your brand?
- what does your link profile look like?
- is there something unique/interesting about the way your website is set up?
Technical areas
1. HTTP or HTTPS
Decide whether to use HTTPS or HTTPS. In most cases, the answer will be the former, given that using HTTPS is one of the ranking factors used by Google. The rule of thumb is that if you are ever planning to make an on-page payment, you will need to use HTTPS on at least those pages.
2. Deciding on the canonical version of URLs
Duplicate content problems can arise if Google can reach the same content through multiple URLs. Without a clear version, sites will compete with each other unnecessarily.
From a developer's point of view, a page is unique if it has a unique ID in the database, while for search engines, the URL is the unique identifier. Therefore, developers need to be reminded that each piece of content should only be accessible through one URL.
3. Website speed
Developers are under pressure to get the site up on time and may neglect areas such as site speed. Stress its importance from the outset and invest some time in optimising site performance.
4. Languages and places
If you are planning to target users in different countries, you need to decide whether the website will be multilingual or multi-regional, or both. Localised keyword research, hreflang considerations and duplicate content are areas that need to be addressed before building a website.
The advantage of separate country-level domains is that you can target a specific area or language much better. However, this approach is dependent on the resources to build and maintain an infrastructure, write unique content and advertise each domain.
If you are planning to work across multiple languages/countries within a single page, it is usually best to create subfolders of each version (e.g. példa.hu/com, példa.hu/en ) The subfolders can be run in a CMS system, which means that maintenance/development will take significantly less time and resources than for multiple domains.
5. Easy editing and flexible interface
Google tries to keep the recommendations and requirements up to date. The interface needs to be flexible to allow for rapid changes if the situation requires it.
Design issues
1. Setup and internal links
Developing an effective information architecture is critical if we want search engines to be able to find our content and make it available to users. If the robots can't access the content, they can't rank it. From a human perspective, information architecture is important to make it easy for users to find what they are looking for.
If possible, we should think in terms of a page structure no deeper than 4 levels, i.e. 4 clicks from the main page. This allows search engines and users to access content with as few clicks as possible.
Conduct keyword and competitor research to find out which pages are important. However, the grouping of pages should be user-centric.
2. Content-driven design
Consider the type of content you will have. Will there be big case studies or a video library? The content strategy should be decided at this point, so that we are clear about what formats we will use and what features we will need accordingly. This can help us design the site and create a much more consistent user interface.
3. Readability (Flash, JS, iFrame) and structured data
The website probably uses different technologies, such as Javascript, Flash and Ajax, which are difficult for search engines to understand. Even though it may be necessary to improve the user experience, we should be aware that these technologies can cause harm.
To increase the readability of the page, use structured data.
4. Responsive design
Each device has different requirements, and mobile devices show changing patterns of behaviour. Mobile is less and less seen as a separate channel. Therefore, the long-term goal must be to provide a perfect and consistent user interface on all devices. To achieve this goal, the use of responsive design and dynamic service flow is recommended to help create device specific experiences.
Summary
As a business owner, or someone who is responsible for a website, there are a lot of things to look out for. This article gives you some important areas to keep in mind.
Source: moz.com