Simple Steps to Maintain SEO Rankings with a New Website

Getting a new website is very exciting.

There is just one HUGE MISTAKE that I see happen all the time. 

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That is; when the new site goes live it’s missing crucial items.

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Items that could cause the website to lose tons of organic traffic from Google. 

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Here I’m going to outline the steps to take when launching a new website to replace an existing website and not lose your SEO rankings.

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This would be if you had a website and you just got a new one that will replace the old one.

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Step 1:

Before you go live with the new website you want to make sure that your tracking codes have been added to the new website. This will avoid any loss of data after switching. Tracking codes such as: Google Analytics, Google Remarketing Tag, Facebook Pixel, and any other tracking software pixel. I recommend using Google Tag Manager to house all your tags.

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Step 2:

The next thing you want to do is make sure that all your pages have Meta Titles & Meta Descriptions. The Meta Titles and Descriptions is what show up within the search results of search engines. Also, add Alt Txt that are keyword/phrase rich to your images. 

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If you want to maintain your current SEO rankings you’ll want to use the same Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions that are currently on your old website. This is also a good time to refresh your Metas to improve rankings and click throughs.

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Step 3:

You want to also (if possible) maintain the same URLs for the pages. Many times this is not possible so what you’ll want to do is setup 301 redirects. The 301 redirect tells the search engines that the page your visiting has moved to this new page. By setting up the 301 redirects Google will be able to quickly index the new pages in place of the old ones.  Visitors to those old pages will not see page not found as they'll automatically go to the new page.

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Step 4:

Once you go live you want to check Google Webmaster Tools to see if Google is finding any 404 errors (page not found). If so, you want to create 301 redirect for those pages. 404 errors are bad for SEO.

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If you do the items listed above, your new website will be ranking just like the previous one, if not better. Use a keyword ranking tool like ProRank Tacker to see where you are before and after the change.

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For any questions just Contact Me.